Don’t get confused; this is not a scene from a futuristic fiction movie; it is, in fact, a real classroom scenario of South Korea. Surprised, aren’t you!
Modern English Language Teaching Technologies
The classroom scene has definitely changed over the past years. While in some places, the traditional English teaching methods are being replaced with the robotic ones, in other places, teachers can be seen using innovative technology to improve their teaching methods. Teachers, who were earlier seen carrying piles of books as their teaching material, can now be seen carrying a small pen drive with them. Many more innovative methods and technologically-advanced teaching tools have been instrumental in changing the entire English language teaching process. Here’s a list of those technologies.
1. Digital Connection: Bringing students and teachers together!
When the age of digitization has dawned over everything, why should English teaching be left behind? By providing an easy and safe platform for connecting, digital technologies have indeed brought teachers closer to their students. They have also enabled the teachers to manage a lot of classroom stuff outside like course structure, activities, etc., with ease. There are several cloud-based tools like Google docs, Evernote, DropBox, etc. which enable the sharing of important notes and research material easily with thousands of students.
2. Global Staffrooms: Bringing together the global teaching methods!
There are many online communities that act as global staffroom for many English teachers. They can come together, share their insights and notes on these platforms that help other teachers with their teaching methods. Solving complex English language doubts of teachers have also become easy with these communities. Various blogs and online ELT blogging sites help English language teachers to come together and share their teaching methods and other tricks with each other.
3. Online Corpora: Accessing the texts to solve queries!
Students have always been questioning and inquisitive. And when it comes to English students, their doubts have always surprised the teachers. Thanks to the online corpora, where teachers can dig into the large collection of texts to come up with the apt answer every single time. While earlier teachers would panic at such questions or make regular trips to the libraries for researching, access to almost every text online has made the entire process simpler and quicker.
4. Mobile Applications: Helping hand to the teachers!
Open up your App Store or Play Store and try searching for English language teaching applications. A number of mobile-friendly apps will come up that will ease out the English teaching process. There are many applications like Teacher Aide Pro and Edmodo that help teachers in managing their classes and students. In fact, there are apps like Learnist and Teacher’s Guide that can be beneficial in polishing the teaching method of English language teachers.
5. Smart Classes: Simplifying teaching methods!
With the emergence of technology, the traditional methods were given a back seat. The use of smart boards to explore other forms of teaching like PowerPoint presentations and short movies attracted the students’ interest as well as worked wonders in explaining the otherwise-difficult things. The interactive whiteboard (IWB) is another innovative technology that helps teachers to save a copy of the notes that they write on the boards. This way, they could easily print and distribute these notes to every student. Read- The Benefits Of Using Audio-Visual Aids In Teaching Whether it is on digital platforms, interactive whiteboards, global staffrooms, applications, or online corpus, English language teaching has definitely changed dramatically over the past few years. The traditional teaching methods have been replaced with these new and innovative ones, and they have undoubtedly proved to be positive for all the teachers and students alike.
