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Title
Roles of EFL Teacher: Applying Technology to Assist Teacher's
Teaching and Enhance Student's Learning in Taiwan's
Middle Schools English Classroom
Presenters
Cheng-Chieh Lai
Ming-Mu, Kuo
Abstract
With the rapid development of technology, our life has changed the way it used to be. Computer, Internet, cell phone, digital camera and camcorder, web blog, MSN, Twitter, My Space, YouTube, Google, iPod, Wii, GPS and so on have all become part of our daily life. These new technologies not only have entertained us or improved the quality of our daily life, but also have been adopted by teachers and students in today's teaching and learning. For years, educators realize the importance and achievement of technology in language education. Research by Egbert (2005) showed that multimedia-assisted language teaching methods have become an important pedagogy to the problem of assisting in the delivery of quality EFL education. However, those technologies are just media for the delivery of knowledge, whether it will success or fail depend on the person who implements it in the teaching and learning. Therefore, today¡¯s teachers have to identify their various roles when technologies are involved in their class planning, teaching, and evaluating.
The purpose of the study was to gain a comprehensive understanding of the relationship between the roles of EFL teachers and instructional technology, and the results can be provided as reference for school leader and administration for the improvement of language teaching and learning in their institutions. For the data collect and analysis, qualitative research method was utilized in the study to gain more detail from the instructor's perspectives. Eight Taiwan middle school EFL teachers were participated in the study to provide their experience and viewpoint of the language teaching with technology. Nine interview questions, based on Taylor's roles of computer assisted language learning theory (1980), were conducted to identify the functions of instructional technology assisted language teaching, the roles of EFL teachers with technology, and the future expectations.
Findings of the study indicate that the functions of technology enhance language teaching are varied from different teacher's perspectives; EFL instructors have different viewpoint and experience toward teaching enhance with technology in their classroom. Even though some EFL teachers stated that they still preferred the traditional teaching method to the technology-assisted language teaching approach, most EFL teachers use technology in different area as a tool, a tutor, and a tutee to meet their individual teaching needs. Four EFL teachers indicated that they prefer to regard themselves as the operator for using technology to provide more online resources, to present their teaching materials, and to evaluate students' learning performance. Three EFL instructors indicated that they play the role of monitor by using the tutorial software to supervise their students' learning progresses. And only one EFL teacher is confident of her computer skills and plays as a designer to design her own EFL learning materials for student through computer technologies. For the future expectation of language teaching with technology, EFL instructors indicated that price, artificial intelligence, and ease of use are three major concerns. How to overcome these factors and prevent they become obstacles for enhancing teaching and learning will be a critical issue in today's EFL classroom.
Reference:
Egbert, J. (2005) CALL Essentials: Principles and Practice in CALL Classrooms. Alexandria, Virginia: TESOL Inc.
Taylor, R. P. (1980). The computer in school: Tutor, tool, tutee. New York: Teachers College Press.
Authors:
Cheng-Chieh Lai, Assistant Professor, Department of Digital Media Design, Hsiuping Institute of Technology (Taichung, Taiwan)
Research interests: Second language acquisition, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) programs.
Ming-Mu Kuo, StarTalk Chinese language teacher, Houston, Texas, USA, 2009
Assistant Professor of Foreign Language Instruction, Wenzao Ursuline College of Languages, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, 2006-2008
Research Interests: Instructional Technology, Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) programs, faculty motivation.
contact asian_efl_journal@yahoo.com
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