it in foreign language teaching â comparing pedagogical options

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II. BETWEEN ‘CHALK AND TALK’ AND IT – THE RATIONALE UNDERLYING PEDAGOGICAL OPTIONS We are not trying in this study to become the devil’s advocate in the matter discussed, but we should debate some recent opinions in the literature [8, 5, 7] that point out to the cases in which the IT technologies should not be used for the sake of novelty, modernization and the like. Thus, in [8] we can find an opinion we agree with that if an activity can be done more quickly/easily using other tools, such as video, audio or mere student – student or teacher – student(s) interactions, then it is better to do so; the benefit consists in avoiding to overcomplicate the teaching - learning process, taking the focus away from the language and getting it onto technology. It is essential, we believe, that the way we implement technology in language teaching should support communication and reflection. That this is true is confirmed by our own experience, as well as that of colleagues with whom we discussed these matters, who seem to consider that – ideally – in their best perspective of a positive language learning experience, they see themselves in a real place, communicating with real people in a real environment! Certainly, it is the language teacher and class that have a major role in supporting the learners to gain confidence, identify needs, introduce new concepts, acquire vocabulary, improve pronunciation, develop grammatical awareness etc. For such a wide range of objectives, IT technology can be seen as taking over the role of virtual advisor, providing interaction, feedback, support a.s.o. for the students. Hence the kind of questions that are aimed to getting new insights into the new roles of technologies for language learning: - How to harmonize the change of language teaching aims with the newly emerged technologies? - What framework of principles should be applied to designing new technologies for language learning – teaching? - What framework of principles should be applied to using IT tools in language teaching – learning in an appropriate, pedagogically justified manner? An important point of view is that of Constantinides [5]. Her article, entitled Don’t forget the pedagogy, points out that we should beware of seeing technology as more than it actually is: the means, and not the end in terms of language acquisition. Its role is to enhance our lessons and not to take over. Currently, the authors concerned with pedagogy-driven approaches to IT are not as numerous as they should be. One of them, Davies [7], shows that the approaches proposed on the quoted site have been generated with emphasis mainly placed on language teaching methodologies that can be successfully implemented with the aid of new technologies, this being the appropriate direction in approaching the IT – language teaching relationship. He points out that the debate on the priority in the matter of pedagogy versus technology has been around for quite many years, but with the emergence of each new technological miracle, it is necessary that it should be re-discussed and the right priorities be re-established. The newly appeared IT tools and technologies should be analyzed from the perspective of the manner in which they can be applied to language teaching – learning optimally, in order to carry out things that cannot be easily done otherwise. We should never let ourselves bewildered by the fascination of new technologies. Our choices should always be made carefully, and, the quoted author emphasizes, the teachers of language should stop seeing IT learning vehicles as something special. Moreover, they should start understanding that the use of technology should be dictated by the educational need, and not the other way round. The learning objective and its attainment should be the starting point in appropriately integrating IT in the language teaching – learning process. Language teaching started from what was later called the chalk and talk approach, with the teachers having only the blackboard, (possibly) a course book and (sometimes) a dictionary at their disposal. In less than 25 years, a multitude of technologies emerged and have become attractive for the language teaching – learning process.
There are extremely numerous authors [11, 14, 13] that make the effort of listing the incommensurable number of IT tools available – as general resources, under sections such: World Wide Web, Discussion lists, blogs, wikis, social networking, and Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). Some even mention the obvious advantages the teachers and students may have in using them, as for instance: (i) providing vast amounts of (downloadable) materials (text, pictures, audio and video recordings), for class and individual learning, and (ii) authentic materials that can be turned into activities. However, as Warschauer [15] points out, the teacher should consider carefully the pedagogic goals in making options. He mentions, quoting previous research, several possible reasons for using the Internet in language teaching: - one reason is the belief that the online communication linguistic nature is suitable for promoting language learning, - it also creates good conditions for learning to write, as it provides an authentic audience for this type of communication, - it can increase students’ motivation, - it is believed that learning computer skills is important to the learners' future success; this suggests, then, that it is not only a matter of using the Internet to learn English, but also of learning English to be able to function well on the Internet (in the case of engineering students, as in our educational context, especially with Computer Science students, this is of particular importance, as they already possess the computer literacy skills, so there is much transfer between the two areas taking place). The same author points out that it is the teachers’ duty to clarify their goals and give priority to one or another of these reasons. This should start from clarifying course and lesson goals, as the simple addition of random online activities into the classroom is pointless, inefficient and therefore unadvisable. One important objective of the teacher in using IT is – as mentioned by the same author [15] - to create tasks that generate both linguistic and cognitive demands on the students in order to get maximum benefit from the Internet as a resource. This is even more successful when the activities and projects created are well-integrated into the course curriculum. We consider that it is important that such teacher-generated applications should be conducive to initiating collaboration among the learners, they should produce meaning and represent a knowledge-producing means. How this can be concretely done can be seen from the literature [6, 7, 13]. They list a series of principles that should underlie the IT based tasks for the foreign language class, which we have reformulated and completed below. Thus, the tasks should: - be easily and clearly understood by the students, - involve all the learners in it, - make cheating impossible, - shorten the time spent with hand writing, - be mixed with hand writing, if that is the focus of the lesson (in our context, this is true for the Russian course), - be logically integrated in the development of the lesson, - represent the best and most memorable solution to a teaching point at the respective stage of the lesson, - not be conceived in such a way as to add other points of difficulty for the students to solve while concentrating on the main task, - attach importance to the content in the first place, and not to the form, as many new technical gee-whizarrdry have a short life in the educational field if they do not really answer a specific need and are mere nine-day wonders, - guide the students to material that not only is of interest to them, but which is manageable at their level of language proficiency (the Internet was not designed to be, and therefore it is not, a complete learning tool, but just one of the many ways and means to be used in language learning; the material available is not graded, therefore,
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