In the last decades, the process of globalization has meant a complete change in the lives of billions of people. Regarding to these transformations, we can state that owing to the fact that technology has become part of the daily life, to some extent we are dependant on these technologies, in particular on the Information Technologies (ITs). Moreover, in the educative scope, we must declare that the ITs represent a strong help for the teachers to find new, more attractive and more meaningful materials; and being even more specific, we can refer to the English language teaching, one of the most beneficiated areas on the subject of the ITs usage. Nevertheless, if used wrongly, the ITs may be useless or even harmful for the users. Now, we will discuss about the role of the ITs in the English language teaching.
On the one hand, we can affirm that even when possessing knowledge has always been an important tool for everybody all along the ages, the type of knowledge has changed, and it is still and continuosly varying; and the knowledge we deal with nowadays is of an important size. We, as English language teachers must show and teach the world’s reality, through a different glass to the students, illustrate the truth about the world by means of the English language. Giving the learners all the knowledge is impossible; however, giving them the tools for them to know the humanity by themselves is not unattainable, and the tool we are referring to is the English language. Fortunately, currently we can make use of the ITs, and get to the knowledge itself easily, for example, with the use of internet we can have an effortless access to updated information, we are also able to communicate with English native speakers online, who can help us to improve our own skills and also who can be part of an interactive school lesson via Skype, for instance. This is obviously motivating for the students who will be more proactive to learn English and see a real application of it, owing to the fact that nowadays, most of the public system students are unable to see a real and useful application of English in their lives. We can also have access to English non native speakers of different cultures and get to the cultural knowledge they have in an extremely easy way, having access to the source of knowledge itself. These characteristics of the ITs if used appropriately can help us to create an amusing learning environment.
On the other hand, if the Its are misused, or if the teacher does not know how to use them in an appropriate way, or if the teacher is not proactive to use technologies in large variety of activities, they will be useless. It is commonly seen in public schools, that classrooms are well equipped with different kind of IT resources, such as TVs, Radios, Computers with internet connection, Data Projectors, and so on; nonetheless, the teachers do not use them accurately, because of several reasons, such as: they do not know how to use them, they feel uncomfortable using “new” things, students may get distracted from the real contents of a class, unfortunately all these reasons are only excuses because a good professor, with a trained classroom management will know how to deal with these factors and make of a normal and boring class, something amusing, motivating and meaningful. However, it is also important to know how to deal with the technologies due to the fact that sometimes we are not aware of the dangers they involve, it is responsibility of the teacher to be aware of this and also to teach the students to be responsible with the usage of these technologies.
In sum, we can state that the globalization is being an involving process which has allowed us to get to the knowledge in an easy way. We, as English language teachers, have the responsibility to use these ITs in a proper way, so as to engage our students with our lessons and also to give them the tools for them to know their reality. Besides, we also have the responsibility to teach them to be conscious about the right use of these technologies, for them not to be in danger of being dependant on these for their lives. We as English language teachers, must be prepared for both knowing these technologies and also for showing our learners the right path for their success in a responsible way.
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