Foreign language instructors have various philosophies about teaching. Their philosophies often reflect the way that they were taught, their formal education, recent research, and their teaching experience in the classroom. The following is a description of (1) what I believe about teaching foreign languages and (2) the role of technology in my classroom.

First, I believe that both students and instructors are responsible for the learning that occurs in a foreign language classroom. Some students may think that the teacher should assume complete responsibility and some teachers would like to think that the students bear all of the responsibility. I believe that both share the responsibility. The students should take it upon themselves to do all that which is possible to learn the foreign language. They should take advantage of every tool at their fingertips to learn. On the other hand, instructors should do all that is reasonable to facilitate learning in the classroom and provide an environment where language acquisition may take place. This is a place where students may begin to make important connections between the forms of words and their functions. It is a place where the students learn from each other and where the language of the classroom is the foreign language.

I believe that what is taught should have practical application in the ‘real world.’ Students should learn to successfully communicate in the foreign language. They should acquire oral production skills, listening comprehension skills, and the ability to read and write in Spanish. In order to do this, teachers should provide an array of activities to develop these skills and students should be eagerly striving to develop them. The teachers should help students to understand how to continue to improve their ability to communicate in the target language. Both students and teachers should make use of technology to aid in the acquisition process.

Second, there are several ways to make use of technology in a foreign language classroom. One way is to use it for classroom management. For example, a course management program such as ANGEL is very useful for distributing handouts, facilitating student to teacher and student to student communication, calculating and posting grades, administering quizzes, and so forth. It frees up time for the instructors to focus their energies on the learning that should be taking place.

Another use for technology in the classroom is to improve instruction. When used properly, media-enriched PowerPoint presentations can be a helpful tool for presenting information. They allow for the instructor to give presentations that are more attractive, interesting, and informative than the traditional chalk-on-blackboard presentations. Audio files, pictures, video, charts and activities can be presented to the class at the touch of a button. An instructor can post the presentation online and the students can use it to be prepared for class or to review for exams.

In addition, the internet provides a valuable resource for enriching a student’s learning experience. The internet has online dictionaries, easy access to news websites from Spanish-speaking countries, streaming radio and television stations from Spanish-speaking countries, and search engines that can aid in testing phrases for grammaticality or to find examples of vocabulary and grammar produced by native speakers. The internet provides an especially valuable resource for target culture into the classroom.

Top