Title : The Contribution of Multimedia Tools to EFL Settings Unfamiliar with Technology
Source : Asian EFL journal
Volume : Volume 5. Issue 3. Article 3
Author : Vu Thi Phuong Thao, an EFL teacher at the English Department at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, Vietnam.
Link to the article : http://www.asian-efl-journal.com/sept_03_sub3.phpThe summary of the research : The remarkable emphasis on communicative approaches and the introduction of technological tools as a substitute of grammar translation method of EFL contributes to the research concern. The research was aimed to explore how students and teachers view their multimedia learning/ teaching experience with a view to deciding whether multimedia may have a valid place in language teaching at Hanoi University of Foreign Studies (HUFS). In terms of methodology, 3 different instruments were used for data gathering. They are; (1) questionnaire surveys of multimedia lab (MML), (2) interviews with teachers and (3) additional survey of the English Department teachers on opinions of using multimedia for EFL despite their MML teaching experience. The subjects are 210 first-year and second-year language students and 50 teachers of the English Department of Hanoi University of Foreign Studies, Vietnam. The results found that all of the students and 90% of the teachers agreed that multimedia is the most exciting and effective teaching tools. Besides that, 100% of the teachers are willing to teaching EFL in MML although they had no experience in multimedia. In addition, although only 20% of the students had used computer, majority of all the student samples considered computers as perfect tools for EFL. Last but not least, it was found that almost all of the teachers and students believe that by using multimedia tools, their language proficiency can be improve and the acquisition process will become faster, easier and more attractive.
My reaction :
The reason why I chose this article is because, I’m interested with the setting of the research which was in Vietnam where they don’t really familiar with technology. As a lot of researches in CALL found that technology is an effective teaching tool in EFL, how about the factor of familiarity or technology savvy towards the finding? From what I’ve seen and reviewed from the article, I think that this research should be developed with greater respondents from different rural areas in order to obtain more convincing and accurate results. Other than that, I think that the research is well conducted, the methodology was good, the literature review was convincing and the findings were clear. Most of all, I really think that this research can bring a lot of implications to teachers, students and EFL field here in Malaysia. First of all, this research resembles our rural areas such as FELDAs or other countryside where the students and teachers don’t have the chance to use the technology widely. Therefore, it helps us to understand how they feel bout it. What teachers can do is, learn and master the technology as students love it and believe that it can improve their achievement and proficiency. But before that, government needs to play their roles by providing the tools or at least one multimedia laboratory in each school and make sure that they are fully functional. Secondly, this research shows the importance of using technological tools in teaching as this method of teaching is overtaking the traditional grammar translation method. Therefore, everybody needs to play their own roles in making it effective and enhancing language learning. Third point is that, it shows that students loves technology and believes that it can help them to make the learning process exciting, easier and faster although they’ve never used one. Therefore, what teacher should do is to develop their interest and make them fully utilize the technology and most importantly let them experience it and get the benefits. Despite of all the positive factors of technology, everybody should be aware of its shortcomings. As technical problems often let us down, what we can do is, always prepare for back ups and have the troubleshooters. Besides that, as the research shows that students tend to have negative attitudes of playing games, chatting or surfing the net instead of focusing on the lesson, what teacher can do is, monitor students PCs from the main PC, block certain unnecessary web and uninstall the games. All in all, I strongly believe that technology can enhance ESL / EFL as long as everybody plays their roles and cooperate in making it successful.
(the article was retrieved on 21 August 2009)
tq for reading =)
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