Since the early 20th there have been many effective innovations in technology concerning to education. The contemporary techniques of exploiting lots of paraphernalia that aid teachers to instruct learners effectively.
There are few devices or equipments that work well in teaching English as a second language. They will allow students or schoolchildren more versatility in the modern classroom. These pieces are the projectors, the Promethean board[3], using social networks to communicate repeatedly, applications that are devised for learning foreign languages and other subjects as well.
However, the projectors were invented in the previous century, these tools are very useful for presenting teacher’s materials nowadays, in addition, teachers may be able to instruct all pupils effectively by the help of them. What is more, projectors are very convenient to make learners understand visually. Every teacher may utilize to present videos, presentations, pictures and this type of material that helps students to learn efficiently [1]. Modern types of projectors can be controlled in distance, that is to say, teachers can control the device at the back of the classroom, and the advantage of this, teacher may control not only the projector, as well as pupils who are bothering during class.
The Promethean board, for those that may not be familiar is a window into digital universe. It simultaneously functions as a writing surface. This means you can draw, write, and explore on a large enough surface that all of your class can see clearly. This is critical for ESL students for a number of reasons. Unlike a PowerPoint slideshow, the interactivity of the Promethean board allows for higher levels of engagement in real time. This means you can really cut back on the time you spend creating your ESL lessons, and you can always change the content of these lessons to fit your needs and modify the presentations to your learners coming out of their levels.
In the middle of the 20th century, the World Wide Web has become the most straightforward technique to communicate with people and exchange ideas all around the world. And the significance of internet in study process of our modern life is undeniable. This term was firstly used in the middle of the 20th century for army force because military services were in demand for such technology that can share information in the highest speed. After a while the term was complicated and spread around the world for assisting to much more fields. Later, program creators invented new way for communication all around the world that is called «Social network». Nowadays, «Social networks» have spread their functions including not only communication, but also teaching as well as learning, as it is the easiest way to deliver information to a large number of people. Below we would like to present the most effective networks to communicate and exchange ideas with people round the world.
«Twitter» — this instant messaging forum is a great way for students to interact with teachers and each other in the target language. Learners can do live chats with friends or foreigners in the language they learn, or participate in language chat and get some practical development. Another list of essential social networks for language learners is «Facebook», «Skype», «Whatsapp», «Telegram», «Imo», «Tango» which people widely use all around world [2]. These types of online chats are extremely helpful to improve learners writing and speaking skills. Moreover, learners broaden their horizon and as a result they get practical knowledge, which is important to obtain while learning foreign language.
The next social network that we would like to mention is «Edmodo». «Edmodo» is a free social learning platform for students, teachers and parents. It looks a little bit like «Facebook» so it is a familiar format for students to use. But before you run for the hills, it is very different to «Facebook» in that way, that it is completely controlled by the teacher and specifically designed for educational purposes. It has a shared timeline as a homepage where teacher and students can interact and teachers can allow students to interact with one another, if they wish. Both teachers and students have a library where they can store documents and share them with others if they want to. The teacher can set assignments, students hand in assignments and teachers feedback on the work all within «Edmodo» [4]. Two particularly useful functions that this network presents are the quizzes and polls, and there is also a built-in grade book that houses your teacher-assessed grades and quiz results for each student. It is really a very useful all-round tool. Teacher could consider saving essential documents — such as mark schemes, poems being studied and teaching presentations — in the class library to give students easy access to these at any time. Teachers can also post photos of class work completed by groups of students or individuals so all the students can see it for best practice. Teachers allowed to schedule weekly spelling tests — set multiple choice quizzes which will automatically collate the results so they can easily see trends within the class's performance.
Another useful site for learning language is «YouTube». «YouTube» was created on February 14, 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. The site allows users to upload, view, rate, share, and comment on videos. Therefore, many online teaching companies upload thousands of videos that are dedicated to learning many languages. By the help of the site a large number of language learners have been using it since it has been created. If learners have available home network they can easily learn language during their spare time. The site has channels that net users should subscribe the channel and they can follow all new videos by seeing it in their home page. This is one of the useful teaching tools. Teachers can download any educational videos which are dedicated to the topic that they are going to teach for their classes. As an example, if a teacher has to present a theme like «Adjective», there is a large quantity of videos in the site. Teachers can easily multiply choose the video and present in their classes.
Recently, a large number of young people have their own smart phones that are always together with them. These devices have very useful applications such as «Duolingo», «Memrise», «Busuu» that may help them easily get into foreign language as quick as it possible. Besides, these types of applications have a great advantage to exploit whenever and wherever they demand.
There is another efficient smart phone application that educators can use during their classes. The program is useful for improving learner’s pronunciation. The instructions for utilizing this application are the following. «Balabolka» is a Text-To-Speech (TTS) program [5]. All computer voices installed on system are available to «Balabolka». The on-screen text can be saved as a WAV, MP3, MP4, OGG, or WMA file. The program can read the clipboard content, view the text from AZW, AZW3, CHM, DjVu, DOC, EPUB, FB2, HTML, LIT, MOBI, PDF, and RTF files, customize front and background color, control reading from the tray or by the global hotkeys. The program uses various versions of Microsoft Speech; it allows ton alter a voice’s parameters, including rate and pitch. The user can apply a special substitution list to improve the quality of the voice’s articulation. This feature is useful when you want to change the spelling of words. The rules for pronunciation correction use the syntax of regular expressions. «Balabolka» can save the synchronized text in MP3 tags inside the audio files. When an audio file is played with players on a computer or on modern digital audio players, the text is displayed synchronously (at the same way, as lyrics for songs).
As we can see in this article the usage of the modern tools in foreign language classes is more efficient than older tools that teachers used in the past. Furthermore, the modern world is not standing still. As it changes, the ways of teaching and organizing the classes should also be reorganized and updated according to possibilities that modern life creates. One of the most important requirements for teachers nowadays is to keep up with the trends of the modern world and to apply cutting edge technology in the learning process in order to achieve the best results.If teachers use this type of devices during their classes with learners, the result of utilizing the tools will reveal its outcome in learning. Hopefully, inventors may conceive more convenient and efficient types of devices in the nearest future.
References:
- Mike Burghall «Helpful tools for language learning» http://calicospanish.com/39 — digital tools your world language classroom should have Nicky Hocky «crowdsourcing», English teaching professional, 2012 Isuue 78, p.58, Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) LTD.
- Sarin Rich's «The battle of the boards» article, English teaching professional, 2012 Issue 78, January, p.54, Pavilion Publishing (Brighton) LTD.
- https://en.m.
- Wikipedia.org/.wiki/Edmodo
- https://cross — plusa.com
