Associate professor Baklagowa J.W.
Kuban State University, Russia
Smart-technologies for Foreign
Language Teaching
There have started up more and more teaching
methods varieties which use newest innovative technologies in the system of
foreign language teaching year by year. They present not only certain technical
means or transmission and information exchange systems that are used in teaching situation but also the
integral system of teaching methods aimed at developing communicative competence and oral skills.
The increase of spheres and speech types
amount, whose fulfilment demands language skills, integration and internationalization
of different life spheres raise demands on the quality of foreign language
teaching.
In the XXI century
technologies became smart; they make our life more comfortable, safety, multifarious,
interesting. They penetrate all life spheres insomuch that the paradigm of
social development has changed from the information one to a smart-society.
The smart-society is a new quality of
society where the totality of using technological tools, servers and the
Internet has led to the qualitative changes in the
interaction of subjects, what allows to get new effects – social, economic and
other advantages for a better life.
In the smart-society the technologies,
which were based on information and knowing before, are transforming into
technologies based on interaction and sharing of experience – into
smart-technologies. Smart-technologies have made modifications in control
strategies in all life spheres,
including the educational sphere.
Smart-technologies in the education
suppose the availability of many sources, the maximal variety of multimedia
(audio, video and graphics). The teaching situation in that kind of society is
becoming handy, flexible and integrated.
The highlight of the modern
smart-education is creating a new and open learning environment: using
gadgets, open educational resources, specific management system.
Smart-technologies
for foreign language teaching are aimed at guaranteeing
both the quality of education and students’ motivation for study.
The use of webinars, video- and
audio-podcasts, twitters and so on – in asynchronous processing and in
on-line mode – increasingly add traditional teaching approaches. They help form
the essential foreign communication skills, enhance students’ motivation for
study, causes to see the subjects prescribed in a new light by unlocking creativity and intellectual potential as a result.
By working with smart-technologies has
increased the role of a teacher (tutor) as an organizer and coordinator of
teaching situation. Teacher gets a chance to conduct teaching situation more
flexible by taking into account individual opportunities of each student.
Therefore flexibility, integration, individual trajectory are the main vectors
in using smart-technologies for foreign
language teaching.
As is generally known, the new concept of
higher education consists in moving from the knowledge-oriented approach to the
competence-based one. The goal of foreign language teaching in higher school is not only the
developing communicative and socio-cultural competences and students’
introduction to the foreign culture but also the development of information
competence that supposes the ability to have a keen sense of the modern information
environment, the ability to search, select and critically analyse the Internet
resources, the ability to communicate by means of modern communication
vehicles.
To the front are coming well handled teamwork
and communicative-based building of teaching situation on the whole. In the
course of carrying out interactive exercises students take an innovative and
independent approach. They aren’t inactive participants of speech acts. Interactive teaching methods help simulate
such situations.
As an example of a concrete introduction
of smart-technologies for foreign language teaching let’s consider the use of video-
and audio-podcasts. Like any
authentic material, the use of podcasts can be really motivating. It allows to
organise lessons in light of differentiated tasks and creates the atmosphere of success.
A podcast
is a type of digital media consisting of an episodic series of audio radio,
video
files subscribed to and downloaded through web syndication or streamed online to a computer or mobile device (usually MP3 files,
Ogg/Vorbis for audio files and Flash Video for other video operations). As a general
rule podcasts have a certain matter and the publication frequency.
There is a quantity of podcasts of a professional and general orientation on
the Internet.
Educational podcasts which are devoted to foreign
languages study allow to deal with many methodological tasks. Among them are forming
of audio skills and abilities to understand a foreign speech aurally, forming
and improving ear-pronouncing skills, widening and refinement of vocabulary,
forming and improving grammatical skills, developing abilities to speak and
write.
All in all work techniques with a podcast coincide
with techniques of working on an audio-text and have an intelligible sequence
of teacher’s and student’s actions: preliminary briefing and preliminary task; the
process of perception and understanding information in podcast; tasks which
control understanding of a heard text.
Many podcasts dealing with a foreign language come
with transcripts to help understanding. Transcripts are convenient to be used
in the preparation for lessons and in the elaboration of methodological material.
By selecting or working out exercises to podcasts, which are aimed at forming
audio skills, it is necessary to pay respect to levels of different exercises’
types.
The most popular classification of podcasts for
foreign language teaching is the classification of British Council Graham
Stanley. This is a unified
classification of podcasting for English Language Teaching (ELT). There are four
basic types of podcasts according to it:
1. Authentic podcasts. Podcasts that are not aimed
at ELT students can often be a rich source of listening. Most of these will
only be suitable for use with higher level students, but others, such as Sushi Radio are made by non-native
speakers of English and their length (5-10 minutes) make them ideal for use
with classes.
2. Teacher podcasts. Produced by teachers, often for their own classes, these podcasts
are usually aimed at helping students learn by producing listening content that
is not available elsewhere, or that gives a local flavour. The Daily Idiom and Madrid Young Learner podcasts are
two very different types of teacher-produced podcast.
3. Student podcasts. Produced by students, but
often with teacher help, your students can listen to these and experience the
culture and hear about the lives and interests of other students from around
the world. English Conversations, for
example is a podcast largely made by students for students. Another interesting
example is the podcast created by the Fudan university high school
students in China.
4. Educator podcasts. Shows such as Comprehensible Input and Bit by Bit are
reflective podcasts that cover methodological matters as well as podcasting for
ELT teachers. Ed Tech Talk is a more
general show about educational technology, which is recorded live (this is called
webcasting) using free Internet telephony and then provided as a podcast [1].
References
1. Stanley, G. Podcasting for ELT. 2005 // Teachingenglish.org [Electronic
resource] / URL: http://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/think/articles/podcasting-elt .