CALL Me … Maybe: a Framework for Integrating the Internet Into ELT
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George M. Chinnery H UNGARY CALL Me … Maybe: A Framework for Integrating the Internet into ELT magine your students practicing students—and their teachers—have their English by playing the role some degree of access to the Internet. of film critic on movie-review But what if you and your stu- Iwebsites like Rotten Tomatoes (rotten- dents have only limited access to the tomatoes.com) … or product reviewer Internet—or none at all? The aim of on online shopping sites like Amazon this article is to present an alterna- (amazon.com) … or reporter on digi- tive framework for Internet integra- tal storytelling sites like Storify (storify. tion in English language teaching com). (ELT), including ideas for incorporat- On the Internet, students of Eng- ing Internet concepts even in schools lish have an authentic context in that have little or no access to it at all which to share their lives through … yet. expressive narrative and eye-catching The article begins with a consid- imagery on social media organizers eration of reasons for integrating the like Pinterest (pinterest.com). Stu- Internet into ELT. It continues with dents can, for instance, compare and a presentation of the framework, contrast global perspectives on cur- complete with practical examples, rent events or public figures using applications, and alternatives. And it web analytics tools like Google Trends concludes with a discussion of reasons (google.com/trends), survey “friends” to reconsider Internet integration. with a polling application on social Reasons to use the Internet networking sites like Facebook (face- in ELT book.com), and report their findings At the time of this writing, it is on multimedia presentation sites such believed that less than 35 percent of as Prezi (prezi.com) or YouTube (you- the world’s population is able to get tube.com). Engaging practices of this online (Miniwatts Marketing Group sort are entirely feasible—as long as 2013). Although the reasons for this 2 2 0 1 4 N UMBER 1 | E NGLISH T ECHINGA F ORUM gap can be attributed to a variety of social, gies, the boundary between informa- economic, and political factors, more wide- tion and communication technology spread access to the Internet in the future is has become somewhat blurred. Tardy all but certain, predominantly in the develop- (2010) used Wikipedia to develop aca- ing world (Broadband Commission 2012). demic writing skills, Boas’ (2011) stu- As access spreads, so will the temptation to dents used blogs and Nings in process integrate the Internet into ELT and expand writing, and Sad (2008) and Reinders its range of possible uses. In other words, a (2010) offered ways to integrate mobile greater number of your colleagues around the web and other features of mobile world, as well as their students, will be using phones into ELT. the Internet, and all of you will find signifi- If this summary is representative of usage cantly more applications than the wide array trends, they indicate that fairly stable access that already exists. to the Internet offers exposure to English, Such applications are typically aligned to along with the opportunity to manipulate what has been referred to as “the great shift” the language and interact in it. As such, the in computer-assisted language learning use of the Internet as a medium adheres to (CALL)—the point in the late 1990s when widely accepted beliefs about how languages many language teachers recognized that the are acquired. nature of this information and communica- The literature on the use of technologies, tions technology (ICT) “neatly paralleled such as the Internet, in ELT and general edu- two key concepts of language learning cation also suggests that they can effectively: and teaching” (Dudeney and Hockly 2012, 536): namely, sharing information and fos- • increase learner motivation and reduce tering communication. A review of CALL- learner anxiety (LeLoup and Ponterio related articles in English Teaching Forum 2003) since 2000 reveals that for ELT purposes, • engage learners (Egbert et al. 2011; the Internet has essentially been used in Felix 2008) these ways: • promote learner autonomy (Gonzalez and St. Louis 2012) • The Internet as an Information Technology: • aid in retention (Mayer 2009; Paivio In the early part of the millennium, 2006), particularly where certain crite- Ellinger et al. (2001) used content- ria—such as when imagery is perceived based websites in English for Academic as strange, funny, or interesting—are Purposes classes, Marco (2002) devel- met (Isola et al. 2011) oped guided webquest activities for English for Specific Purposes students, A framework and Kung’s (2003) students utilized If you choose to integrate the Internet web resources to help develop and into your instruction, the next logical consid- inform speeches. eration is how exactly to do so. The answer • The Internet as a Communication Tech- depends in part on the level of Internet access nology: Also early in the millennium, available. This section presents a framework the emphasis was on webpages and for organizing instructional Internet usage by synchronous computer-mediated com- level of access. munication (CMC). Kayser’s (2002) students published web-based projects Unlimited access: The Internet as a medium for a global audience, Warschauer dis- of instruction cussed the importance of ICT literacy If you have stable and predictable access, (Ancker 2002), and Chinnery (2005) the Internet provides a virtual goldmine of offered techniques for using text-based activities. Indeed, most Internet-based activi- chat to develop oral communication ties presented in the literature seem to have skills. been developed under the assumption that • The Internet as a Social and Mobile Tech- teachers have infinite opportunity to use the nology: More recently, with the growth Internet. The technologies employed in such of social media and mobile technolo- activities have been traditionally dichoto- E NGLISH T E ACHING F ORUM | N UMBER 1 2 0 1 4 3 mized as being either tool or tutor (Levy and You can refer your students to concor- Stockwell 2006). dances or corpora to analyze their own errors or explore common language use such as The Internet as tutor collocations. You can also use these tools to As a tutor, the Internet can be used to model authentic examples of a particular lan- offer advice, facilitate analysis, or conduct guage point. activities. For Activities. Traditional activities such For Advice. Numerous sites offer lessons as gap-fill, multiple-choice, and matching on English language usage, such as gram- exercises have been a mainstay since the early mar, vocabulary, and idioms. The Gram- days of using the Internet in ELT. The main mar Girl (grammar.quickanddirtytips.com) difference with modern examples, such as website and podcast, which provide short Free Rice (freerice.com), is their increased lessons on specific points (e.g., “Who Versus level of sophistication. Free Rice’s glossy Whom”) given by a lively and charismatic synonym-matching and grammar exercises expert, are advice-giving resources that teach- allow students to learn through practice and ers and learners might exploit. Minimally, through trial and error. Questions are pro- you or your students can use Grammar Girl’s gressively difficult, but as added incentive, columns simply for reference. Alternatively, correct answers help support an international you might assign your students to present on charity. a column of their choice to the class, submit Other ELT activity websites can be eas- a question or tip to Grammar Girl, or write ily identified through a web search for “ELT their own column that they can develop into exercises.” You can direct students to such a broadcast-style show. websites for independent practice or team For Analysis. Web-based text and speech competition. You and your students might corpora and concordancers offer superb even develop your own web-based activities opportunities for language analysis. Corpora by using free software such as Hot Potatoes are collections of authentic language samples, (hotpot.uvic.ca) or websites like LearnClick typically limited to a particular type, such as (learnclick.com). academic speech (see the Michigan Corpus of American Spoken English at micase.eli- The Internet as tool corpora.info), pronunciation (see the Speech As a tool, the Internet can be used for Accent Archive at accent.gmu.edu), and pop- a deeper level of student engagement and ular literature and media (see the Corpus of interactivity by helping stimulate creativ- Contemporary American English at corpus. ity; it can also foster communication and byu.edu/coca). Search engines themselves can collaboration. even be used as corpora (see Robb 2003). For Creativity. Even if learners lack Google, for instance, offers custom search advanced levels of proficiency, they can pro- engine capabilities, allowing for searches from duce creatively in English on a number of within limited sites. sites. At Draw a Stickman (drawastickman. KWIC (key-word-in-context) concor- com), pairs of students can collaborate on a dance programs such as WebCorp Live (web- picture dictation activity, in which one orally corp.org.uk/live) access corpora and organize paints a picture that the other attempts to the results in a way that can help raise learners’ reproduce. At Make Beliefs Comix (make- English language awareness of language form beliefscomix.com), students can create basic and meaning. When users enter a word or comic strips, with dialogue. phrase in the search field, they are presented More advanced learners can use Dvolver with a list of authentic examples of that word (dvolver.com) or one of the features at Gra- or phrase in context. A search for school, for pheine, such as Futebol TV (grapheine.com/ example, might produce the following results: futeboltv), to create amusing short films primary school system by directing or selecting video clips, then the school bus crafting subtitled or dubbed dialogue or my school teacher narrative.