Regular Posting-13
In my Regular Posting 11, I mentioned emails being a way to teach languages to students. In the article Language Learning and the Internet by Lesley Graham (1), emails and languages learning is also explored. 15 students from Bradford University send a weekly email to their teacher. They are not assessed on their grammar but a natural way to express them in the Target Language is offered. This experience was based on Krashen theory that the acquisition of languages is primordial and the learning secondary. Emails offer a stress-free environment where students are encourage to express themselves in the Target language. This mode of expression recreates the early stage of acquisition mentioned by krashen.
I am familiar with Krashen theory about language acquisition and do believe that by recreating an environment close to the one we were familiar with during the acquisition of our first language, we enhance the chance for students to succeed in learning a second language.
It seems that today, emails and other technologies make this possible. However, what alarm me the most – is not the input the teacher or students will provide, neither the amount of technology we will use during the learning process – is the fact that languages are not compulsory in the Australian curriculum, and that LOTE subject seem to don’t be taken seriously.
In today’s world, where everybody moves, travel, work overseas, or even meet online, languages are important. Europe understands it very well. In the Educational Curriculum, Languages are compulsory and they allow European inhabitants to interact more easily and to understand each others better, with the use of new technologies or not.
(1) Lesley Graham is a tutor for a Professional Master formative in languages of speacialists from other disciplines at the University of Bordeaux France.
