Teaching technology for languages

There is an unavoidable truth that learning another language takes time and patience and is typically deemed a tough school subject, yet its benefits are far reaching. Language learning is not just about learning a set of vocabulary; it comes with an understanding and appreciation of different cultures.
    
Students who learn another language show greater cognitive development in creativity and higher order thinking skills such as problem solving, conceptualisation and reasoning. Typically, they also tend to have greater self confidence than their monolingual peers. In addition, as international business continues to become a norm in the global economy, it’s important that the UK workforce has the necessary language skills to establish meaningful relationships with others from different countries.
    
These are but a few examples, yet they demonstrate it’s in our best interests to help students recognise the value of speaking another language. Technology is an excellent facilitator for this, especially given it’s prevalence in young people’s lives, and can help speed up the learning process.   

Tailored to pupils’ needs
To create an environment conducive to language learning, educators will usually set tasks that support the three key learning styles – visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. Mobile devices can support this, broadening the way they teach and the way students learn. Language learning apps give students the opportunity to practice vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation - the ‘hard graft’ of language learning – anytime, anywhere. This makes the foundations of learning a language more engaging, and allows students to progress at their own pace.
    
Some mobile apps for learning language vocabulary enable access to native speaker audio files. These develop pronunciation and help students perfect the intonation of words crucial for many languages.
    
Making the most of mobile learning provides students with an engaged and active role in their education journey, which in turn, allows language learning to become so integrated into their daily routines that it doesn’t feel like work.
    
With increased wi-fi in schools and many opting to roll out 1:1 device schemes, increased internet access allows language teachers to make use of online specialist language software in class. Text-reconstruction software allows teachers to provide students various texts in which letters or words are either missing or scrambled. This is an effective teaching strategy that supports students to focus on the parts of language within the context of the whole text.
    
Multimedia simulation software incorporates video, sound, graphics and text which allows learners to explore computerised microworlds with exposure to a language in a meaningful context. This gives students greater control over their learning experience, helping them to actively construct knowledge.

Effective resources
Furthermore, through their internet enabled smart devices, students can gain access to online foreign newspapers to aid language learning. Teachers could consider asking students to translate interesting news stories, not only improving their vocabulary and enabling them to become more independent learners, but allowing them to see things from a different perspective and read about events that are not necessarily reported in the news they are used to watching and reading.

Other online resources available via students’ mobile devices include videos and animations, which may of particular interest to visual learners and songs by native language speakers, useful for auditory learners – the types of resources not usually available in traditional language lessons.
    
Another way of increasing independent learning, while simultaneously improving pronunciation, extending speaking skills and deepening understanding, is to ask students to create their own digital language learning content. Teachers may wish to ask students to record their own audio files using their personal tablets or smartphones to revise vocabulary, or work together on developing online language newsletters or magazines, the latter of which improves students’ general presentation skills as well.

Motivating students
Competition can play a key role in the classroom to stimulate, engage and create a sense of enjoyment around learning, as well as establishing interaction with peers. It can also prove an effective way of engaging lower ability students to develop a stronger interest in languages. With this in mind, schools may wish to participate in online inter-school language championships which use a real-time points and scoreboard system to track student progress at a glance and motivate them to improve their score.
    
Many schools may not have the time to look for new language learning technology tools and become familiar with them. Some may also be concerned about relinquishing control to their tech-savvy students. But at the end of the day, education technology is here to stay.
    
Language educators must seek to create opportunities for authentic and meaningful language learning both in and outside the classroom. By using new technologies, we can better prepare students for the cross‑cultural interactions increasingly required for academic, vocational and personal success.

Further information
www.vocabexpress.com