English Language Departmental Magazine - PSAU

General
Using Technology
to Learn or Teach
English
by,
Ms. Hannan AlShehab
G
lobalization changed many things in our life, such as the way of learning and
communicating. Today, the practice of using smart phones is famous in all age
stages. In the 21st century, most people are exposed to communicating and being
in contact through using social media and applications that facilitate their life in
many ways, for instance, free applications that enable voice and video calls. Not
only that, technology has had a great impact on education for many years. The
traditional methods for learning are no longer admired by the new generation
because today's children open their eyes in the technology era. They are used to
seeing the flash of the camera, using their fingers to touch the screen of the
smart devices since they are born. In addition, colorful pictures and creative
videos motivate them. They can learn many things from the multimedia sources
that are available on the Internet. Indeed, using smart devices requires much
effort from the parents in monitor their kids’. From my point of view, technology
suits all the ages as there are a great variety of websites and programs. There are
websites for different services such as translation, finding a job, teaching some
languages, etc. In addition, still others offer entertainment and communication.
No one can ignore the improvements in teaching and learning processes and
strategies because of using the internet. Teachers and learners can enjoy their
time by incorporating technology at the same time, doing their work. Most of the
courses need to use technology to make them easier, and more enjoyable for the
students. CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) is one of the subjects that
highlight using technology in learning. It is stated that researchers like
Warschauer and Kern (2000) have argued for some time that “CALL came of age
when it started to enable people to do the things they wanted to do with language
through technology, enabling language activities to be social and observable”
(Thomas, Reinders, &Warschauer, 2012. P.56).
H O W C A N T E C H N O L O G Y
F A C I L I T A T E O U R
L E A R N I N G O R T E A C H I N G
E N G L I S H
29
NEWS LETTER VOLUME-2