By: Mashael Al- Salem
The Internet in English Language Teaching: Advantages, disadvantages and its application in the English teaching process
Abstract
Nowadays, the Internet is vastly employed in developing the English language. This paper presents the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet in English language teaching (ELT). A possible method to overcome the online service problem has been indicated. In addition, two of the most common applications of the Internet in ELT: electronic mail and live chat are discussed. E-mail is often regarded as asynchronous communication which improves English writing skill and English communication. Live chat, on the other hand, is considered synchronous communication which develops speaking skill in the English language
“We all know the Internet is the greatest boon to English teaching”
Kenneth Beare
The Internet is generally defined as a worldwide network of continually connected computer systems (Webster, 2005). The Internet arises from the need for fast communication means. This need is especially expressed by research institutes and universities. At first, the Internet was only used by the U.S military. Nowadays and after the invention of the World Wide Web service, the Internet becomes available to every one. As a result, the number of Internet users has increased and varied to include public bodies, companies and private individuals. Many people, as a matter of fact, make a clear distinction between the Internet and the World Wide Web. However, I shall use the two terms alternatively to refer to the same thing; the online service provided in computers.
The Internet offers a variety of services that can be employed in a wide range of fields. These fields may include: data collection, fun and entertainment, advertisement, communication and education. Of course in this paper, I will focus my discussion on some of the possible uses of the Internet in education, especially, in English language teaching (ELT). My concern here is to indicate how the global phenomenon of utilizing the World Wide Web in English language learning and teaching has been invested to fulfil the requirements of different English language activities. Today, the Internet provides vast opportunities to develop skills in all four language areas; listening, speaking, reading and writing. As a matter of fact, the Internet seems to be successfully employed to facilitate the improvement of the learner's English proficiency.
In this paper, I aim to state the number of reasons to why we need to use the Internet in ELT. Challenges and difficulties to achieve this goal will also be presented. Following that, I will provide two of the most common applications of the Internet in ELT: electronic mail and live chat. The former application will discuss the use of e-mail in improving English writing skill and English communication. The communication achieved here is often referred to as asynchronous. The later will deal with the impact of live chat in developing speaking skill in the English language. This form of Internet application is commonly called synchronous, that is, it is a real time activity.
Why using the Internet in ELT
Most educators and teachers regard the internet as a valuable tool in ELT. It provides variety of materials that meet individual student abilities and address individual student goals, leading to purposeful, constructivist learning. The authors of Internet for English Teaching have listed five reasons to why we should introduce the Internet in ESL classroom. These are:
(a) it provides authentic language materials; (b) it enhances the student's level of literacy in conducting on-line communication; (c) it enables the student to interact with native and nonnative speakers for 24 hours on end; (d) it makes the learning process lively, dynamic, and interesting; (e) it gives both the student and the teacher the power to work efficiently (Li, 2005).
In general, I may list four reasons that make me want to use the Internet in ELT.
1. The Internet is a perfect source to get a bundle of information regarding English language learning and teaching. There are countless English education sites that may offer great helpful tips on English teaching techniques and English learning strategies. Regarding this reason I may add what The Northeast ABLE Resource Centre (2004) has stated:
The Internet provides greater variety of information: It has the ability to provide a large variety of information formats. There is a great amount of information readily available in on-line encyclopaedias, hundreds of types of dictionaries, atlases and other materials.
[In addition], the Internet provides teachers with resources: There are extensive numbers of Gateway sites – sites with lists of links to other resource sites – that are great timesavers when looking for materials. Teachers can look at information provided by professional organizations, publishers, journals and newsletters.
2. The World Wide Web enforces collaborative learning. Since the web is a huge database reference, it will be effective to ask students to group and search for a particular topic. Students then can meet in class and discuss their findings.
3. It offers many different ways of teaching English language. There are quite few English teaching sites that are designed to suit the learner’s proficiency level and to meet the learner’s needs.
4. In the general sense, the Internet provides a diversion from the traditional means of teaching and learning. Students start to take part in their learning process and participate in this process. According to The Northeast ABLE Resource Centre (2004):
The Internet empowers students: Using the Internet provides students with much more control over their learning. They can control the pace, so that they can spend as much time as they feel necessary on a topic and can review or drill as much as they need. Students experience a sense of privacy and confidentiality while working on a topic repeatedly. Learners can have some control over the choice of learning topics and the sequence of learning as well as more control over their use of their learning time.
Muehleisen (1997) has given a number of reasons for using the internet in English classes. I found a couple of reasons that are useful to present in this paper. These include:
- The Internet places English in an international context. Students quickly discover for themselves that a majority of the information on the Internet is in English; they also discover that they can use English as a means of learning about and communicating with people around the world, and not just in English speaking countries.
- Internet projects are interactive. Even when students are simply browsing, they are actively choosing what they will look at next. Searching for information involves work on the part of the students, as do sites which ask the user to fill out forms. Most web sites have e-mail addresses so that viewers can ask questions or send comments to a creator of a site, something which makes the web more easily interactive than a book or magazine.
Challenges and Limitation
Up to this point in time, the above discussion has described some of the potential benefits of the Internet in English language teaching. However, such a discussion would be incomplete without addressing the disadvantages or obstacles related to the use of the Internet in the language teaching and learning. “While the Internet and its various facets offer a great deal to the language learner, it is not without its problems” (Singhal, 1997, ¶ 6). Researchers and book authors in this field have indicated several difficulties regarding the use of the Net in ELT or in education in general. These will be referred to in time, but first I would like to list and discuss the reasons to why using the Net in teaching in my country is such a great challenge.
Although, the Internet is not properly invested in the educational facilities in my country; K.S.A, I would try to present some of the preservations we have against using the Net in our educational system. These limitations are based on my personal observation and my personal experience as a teacher and an individual Net user. These difficulties can be classified into three categories: facility qualifications, system requirements and users’ acceptance.
1. Facility Qualifications: This simply means whether the school, college or institute is fit to carry on this technology or not. Some schools or colleges are financially ready to bring in such technology, however, they cannot provide the right place to have it in. Furthermore, an educational facility may accommodate 60 students in one class and afford all the necessary requirements to use the web (e.g., computers, on-line service…etc), nevertheless, there is the issue of class control and management to be maintained. It will be nearly impossible to check on every student in such a class with huge number of learners. You cannot guarantee that all the students have used the Net properly and achieved the intended goal.
2. System Requirements: Conveniences for using the Internet are not often readily available. Most computers come equipped with the tools needed to connect to the Internet. All one needs is a modem, a telephone line (or DSL adopter and DSL phone line) and an Internet service provider. These requirements, however, are not easily obtained. There is always the financial issue regarding the phone line bill. As a result, some students just cannot afford it.
3. Users’ Acceptance: this point involves three agents: the teacher, the student and the parents.
It is probably agreeable that integrating the Internet in ELT demands from the teachers competence and proficiency in using this technology. If teachers are not qualified, then a training programme is of necessity. Providing a training period on using the Internet in ELT will definitely eliminate such an obstacle.
Still, some teachers may be quite familiar with using the World Wide Web, yet, they may refuse or are reluctant to employ it in their EL classes. This is due to the fact that Internet integration in ELT requires a lot of work. This work, as a matter of fact, is regarded as an additional task that compiles with the other responsibilities. Teachers have to surf the web and find suitable materials to their students. Teachers, in addition to that, have to come up with new methods to introduce this technology into their classes and curriculum. And most importantly, they have to change their teaching style. The teaching process will not be totally on the teachers to do. The Internet will have to pull its share in this process.
Moreover, since the Internet allows for most of the English language activities to be done after school hours, the teachers have to keep on checking and monitoring their students’ progress after job hours. This seems to the teachers like bring work back home with them. They have to look at students’ e-mails or join with them in any chat session. This will definitely take up from the teachers’ personal time.
As for students, I have mentioned before that using the Internet in ELT give students a chance to control their learning and be in charge of developing their language and improving areas of weakness. This, of course, makes students more involved in polishing their skills and more responsible for their EL proficiency progress. Unfortunately, some students turn down such an opportunity. They simply do not want extra work to be laid on their shoulders. Students usually prefer to come to class and listen to whatever their teacher has to say and be done with it. Of course, this is not applicable to all students. A fair number of learners are more than eager to take the reins of their learning directing it towards their most needs.
Parents, as I have stated above, are essential participants in the process of integrating the Internet in ELT successfully. They present a constant problem because mostly the Internet is viewed as the door of evil and the road of corruption. As such, the web service is not accepted or even considered all together. Although illegal and prohibited sites are blocked, the Pop-Ups are unavoidable. These Pop-Ups often offer gambling sites or indecent pictures and screensavers. Consequently, many parents will not approve on their kids using the Internet even for educational purposes.
Singhal in his article The Internet and Foreign Language Education: Benefits and Challenge seems to have sum up the challenges in a very clear fashion. He says:
The nature of the Internet itself can be a disadvantage at times. When lines are busy due to many users, it may take time to access information or browse the Net and technical glitches themselves can lead to frustration. Lack of training and familiarity on part of the teachers can make it difficult to implement the Internet in the language classroom. This requires that school administrators budget for training in this area. Costs related to training, as well as on-line costs of using a provider are issues that may interfere with implementing such a technology in schools, especially in schools that have little funding… The Internet offers access to all types of issues and topics, some of which are unsuitable for children, and this in itself may result in various problems…. As the commercial sector begins to assume a more prominent role in the Internet's infrastructure, rural and inner-city schools…may find it less affordable….Many institutions such as these may also not have the computers or computing facilities necessary to implement such type of technology (1997, ¶ 6).
A Possible Solution: The Internet Unplugged
For English language teachers who wish to use the Internet in ELT but are hand cuffed by the unavailability of the online service, they may try the Internet unplugged method. This method is not so hard to apply, but it requires a lot of work from the English language teachers. The Internet unplugged simply requires from the teachers to surf the Net and download all kinds of materials they feel suitable for their students. Websites downloading process should be done through the save as option. This way the Websites may open even if the user is offline. The downloaded pack can be put on a CD which then can be used in the classrooms computers. Several copies can be even made and distributed among the students. Students then can open the CD at home, search the content and use the materials there for their learning. The material saved on the CD has to be of a great amount and variety so students feel like they are actually surfing and searching the Net themselves.
Another way to create an offline Internet service is via developing and making your own Website. Teachers may design their own Web using Web authoring applications and then save them to a disk. Even without specific Web page designing programs, teachers may still do it through PowerPoint and Word. These programs have a Save as HTML function, enabling the file to be converted into a Web page. I would say creating your own Website is better simply because you can direct your material to subject the most common weakness among your students. You may add animation, images, sounds, text…etc that suites your learners without fearing exposing them to unaccepted ideas or indecent pictures.
Downloading pages from the web and creating pages from scratch are two possible ways to involve the Internet in ELT classes and to encourage students to use their English outside classes.
Internet Application in ELT
Regardless to these difficulties, it must be acknowledged that the role of the Internet in ELT is undeniable. The Net can be manifested in ELT in various manners. Eastment, Hardisty & Windeatt (2000) have written:
The Internet is especially useful for integrating the skills because of its flexibility, the variety of source material (audio/written texts to be used as input), and the multiple platforms (e-mail, bulletin boards, and Internet relay chat) that it provides for student production and interaction with other learners and native speakers of the target language.
Now, I would like to bring to light two of the Internet applications in ELT. These are: electronic mail and live chat.
electronic mail.
E-mail exchanges can promote English language learning. Sakar (2001) has written that exchanging e-mails “is a good opportunity to practice English and learn to communicate”. Since e-mails require the skill of writing, it goes without saying that they are best employed to improve English writing. What so good about e-mail is that it allows students to keep on practicing their English after school. In addition, availability of computers at schools or colleges is not necessary. Students can carry on the task from their homes, offices or public libraries. For that reason, e-mail exchanges is considered asynchronous learning. Students carrying on this task do so during their own preferred time and at their own pace. In other words, e-mail exchanges among students does not happen simultaneously.
Roseanne Greenfield, a teacher at a secondary school in Hong Kong, has conducted an e-mail exchange project where her students communicated with native English speakers. According to Meloni, Shetzer & Warschauer (2000, p. 97) Greenfield’s e–mail exchange has involved three elements: project-base learning, cooperative learning and process writing. Greenfield’s students have exchanged personal letters and worked with their international partners on two types of academic essay writings, descriptive essays and imaginative essays. This project seems to have yielded some magnificent effects.
According to Greenfield, the project had many benefits, including giving the students a chance to develop their writing skills for real audience while developing the skills of long-distance negotiation, organization, editing, revision, and editorial production. The project helped students see English as a valuable tool for international communication rather than only as subject required… (Meloni, Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000, p. 98).
Another project performed by Karen Fedderholdt, a teacher at Toyama University, Japan, has involved e-mail writing between non-native speakers (NNS) of English. Below are two of the objectives of this project as Fedderholdt (2001) has stated:
1. Increase motivation for writing by:
a- giving students genuine reasons for writing
b- having NNS as ‘key-pals’, to create a less stressful environment.
2. Give students experience in using English as a lingua franca, and let them see how learners in other countries write English.
The project has shown that an international e-mail exchange between English language learners from different countries gave in a number of positive results.
Students were keen to write to their key-pals, and delighted with the e-mails they received from them. [They] could easily and pleasurably complete their…assignments…[and their] first experience of writing continuous texts was enjoyable. A measure of [the project] success was…that a number of students chose to continue writing [italics added] to their key-pals after the project was completed (Fedderholdt, 2001, p. 280).
There are a number of websites that offer free web-based e-mail addresses for everyone. EL teachers may direct their students on how to set an e-mail address or do it for them and provide them with the passwords later. Some of these addresses can be found in the selected websites section.
live chat.
“Live chat offers users the possibility to chat in real-time with other users from around the world” (Chinnery, 2005, p. 13). The great thing about this is- like e-mail- students can do it after school hours in their homes and during their free time. Most chat sites depend on typing. My core of interest here is to present chats performed orally either through microphones or web cams, that is, voice chat. There is also the possibility of recording one’s voice and sending it via the messenger. Yahoo, msn messengers and Google talk provide such a service. Before I start discussing the role and the results of using live chat in improving speaking, let me indicate a couple of points that present crucial difficulties in using and advising students in my country to sign up in English chat sites.
Firstly, females in my country are not allowed to chat with males neither from their country nor from other countries. This means chat sessions should be prepared ahead to include only females.
Secondly, a teacher or a supervisor should be there when students chat mainly to monitor the talk and to make sure nothing inappropriate is said. The supervisor will also make certain that all participants talk during the session.
In point of fact, voice chatting with others, either native or non-native speakers of English, is a great way to practice speaking skills in a stress-free and uninhibited environment. This is a particularly good method for students who are shy about speaking English. Voice chatting will help in building their confidence to eventually speak the language face to face. By joining one of the voice chat rooms (see Selected Websites section) students can discuss any special interest topic they like. Voice chatting provides a strong motivation for interactive and communicative use of language. ELT teachers can use chat sessions as a means for meaningful authentic communication with the real audience. The learner can join several chat groups according to his/her own interest.
In conclusion, the Internet is a real asset to ELT. It is a beneficial tool in teaching English. The World Wide Web puts forward a number of various resources to improve the English language skills. The preceding discussion has presented the advantages and disadvantages of using the Internet in ELT. In this paper, I have, also, discussed one possible way to invest the Web into the process of teaching English. Towards the end, I have displayed two of the Internet most common and easily applicable activities; the electronic mail and the live chat. Both e-mail and live chat motivate English learners to interact in many ways. This interaction has been spotted and referred to as a positive one. E-mail seems to empower students writing skill, while live chat encourages and improves the speaking skill. I would urge English teachers to make use of the Internet in their English classes since it is a good way of motivating students to use English outside the classroom and to make English a part of their daily lives. I really hope that one day we will use the Internet in our ELT classes as easily as we use the chalk and board.
Selected Websites
These sites offer a free web-based e-mail.
http://www.hotmail.com
http://mail.yahoo.com
http://www.netadress.com
http://www.egroup.com
http://www.gmail.com
Below is a list of some sites that offer free English chat sessions to ES/EF learners around the world.
http://www.tolearnenglish.com/
http://esl.about.com/od/speakingenglish/Speaking_English_Pronunciation_andConversation_Skills.htm
http://esl.about.com/od/conversationlessonplan1/Lesson_Plans_for_Speaking_and_Conversation_for_ESL_EFL_Classes.htm
http://www.bmconsultantsindia.com/index.html
http://www.uta.fi/FAST/AK11/ak11sked.html
http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/english/speaking.html
http://www.ohiou.edu/opie/study.html
http://resourcexpress.net/9/english.php?zt=English%20Speaking%20Class
References
Bork, A. (2001). What is Needed for Effective Learning on the Internet? retrieved March 31, 2007, from http://www.ics.uci.edu/~bork/effectivelearning.pdf
Chinnery, G. (2005). Speaking and Listening Online: A survey of Internet resources. English Teaching Forum, 43 (3), 10-15.
Crystal, D. (2001). Language and the Internet. Retrieved March 29, 2007, from http://www.worldwidewords.org/reviews/langinternet.htm
Drubbel, B. (2005). The 21st Century Webster’s International Encyclopedia (2nd ed.). Colombia: Trident Press International.
Dudeney, G. (2000). The Internet and the Language Classroom: A Practical guide for teachers. Cambridge University Press.
Eastment, Hardisty & Windeatt. (2000). The Internet. NY: Oxford University Press.
Fedderholdt, K. (2001). An Email Exchange Project Between Non-native Speakers of English. ELT Journal, 55 (3), 273-280.
Kumar, M. (2004). Learning with the Internet. Retrieved March 23, 2007, from http://www.newhorizons.org/strategies/technology/muthukumar.htm
Lafford, P. (2201). Review of The Internet. Retrieved March 31, 2007, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol5num1/review1/default.html
Li, S. (2005). Review of Internet for Language Teaching. Retrieved March 19, 2007, form http://llt.msu.edu/vol9num1/review1/default.html
Lord, G. (2004). Review of The Internet and the Language Classroom: A practical guide for Teachers. Retrieved March 20, 2007, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num2/review1/default.html
Meloni, C., Shetzer, H. & Warschauer, M. (2000). Internet for English Teaching. Alexandria, VA: TESOL.
Muehleisen, V. (1997). Projects Using the Internet in College English Classes. Retrieved March 19, 2007, from http://iteslj.org/Lessons/Muehleisen-Projects.html
Sakar, A. (2001). The Cross-Cultural Effects of Electronic Mail exchange on the Turkish University Students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL). Retrieved March 20, 2007, from http://www.clec.ritsumei.ac.jp/english/callejonline/6-1/sakar.html
Singhal, M. (1997). The Internet and Foreign Language Education: Benefits and Challenges. Retrieved March 26, 2007, from http://iteslj.org/Articles/Singhal-Internet.html
The Northeast ABLE Resource Center. (2004). Why Using the Internet. Retrieved March 25, 2007, from www.ohioable.org
Thorne, S. (2002). Review of Language and the Internet. Retrieved March 29, 2007, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/review1/default.html
Students need to be able to learn how to become effective problem solvers. A student is able to perform in a problem solving situation because he has constructed an interpretation of how things work using pre-existing structured.