Network-based language teaching

According to Ken and Warschauer, the main ideas of the different perspectives to language learning are:

- structural: language develops by transmission from competent users. Learners should imitate the modelled discourse and internalize structures through repetition. Errors are to be diminished by corrective feedback. Focus is on the mastery of discrete skills.

- cognitive: focus is on the development of strategies for communication and learning. Language is viewed as a “mentally constructed system”; learners should develop cognitive, problem-solving apporaches.

- sociocognitive: language develops through social interaction. Creation of authentic, communicative tasks is needed. Language is viewed as a “social and cognitive phenomenon.”

The role of computers in the 3 approaches are:

- structural: providing drill, explanation and corrective feedback
- cognitive: providing language input and analytical task
- sociocognitive: providing contexts for interaction, facilitating access to dicourse communities

In my opinion, the Web 2.0 can best be used with the sociocognitive approach. Only there, advantages of the Web 2.0 can evolve, such as editing content whenever possible, providing interactive user experiences an creating meaningful tasks which will (hopefully) motivate students.

Have weblogs changed language learning?

I’m not sure whether weblogs have already changed language learning since I don’t think that they are a wide-spread tool in the foreign language classroom yet. But once they start to become familiar to both, teachers and students, there is a great opportunity that weblogs lead to a change in the way students learn. The interaction in the classroom and the idea of writing something for an infinite number of readers may encourage students to create something that is worth the effort. The process of writing will be different due to the fact that there is an audience, and thus “it [the interaction] is an important factor by which the writing process in influenced.” (http://phnewmedia.files.wordpress.com/2008/05/raith-final-version1.pdf)

My experience with working with wikis…

…is quite limited. So far I have only done something for a seminar at the PH (which I can hardly remember) but haven’t really worked with a “real” wiki yet (nevertheless I’m using wikipedia quite often, like so many ). Nevertheless, the more I elaborate on wikis the more interesting they get. If I was sure that a school provides the material (PCs, fast internet lines etc.) and colleagues are supportive too, I think I would use Wikis in the classroom. I haven’t decided on topics yet but I could imagine using it as a type of diary journal when reading young adult literature, for example. Of course, in this case pupils would have to be in class 9 or 10 because of the complexity of tasks that would have to be fulfilled. Pupils would have to comment on guiding questions/suggestions and hopefully, by starting such a topic, a (Wiki-)discussion amongst the class could be started (which would be guided by the teacher). Sounds challenging but maybe it’s worth a try.

Wikis

What I found out is that there are tons of links to wikis for EFL teachers and that you can spend a lot of time searching for useful ones. Definitely a thing worth looking at during the term break in order to get some order into it… Some examples were really interesting but I still don’t know how to use wikis in our teaching career yet.

My Expectations

Well, I think my expectations for the seminar Web 2.0 in the classroom are how to integrate Web 2.0 features sensibly into the classroom. Therefore, I’d like to see examples of working with blogs etc. and not just talk about it in theory. It would be nice if one could use ideas of how to integrate the Web later in their teaching career and be aware of its advantages and dangers.