Course work theme: technology in education teaching listening

CONCLUSION

Educational media and tools can be used for:

• task structuring support: help with how to do a task (procedures and processes),

• access to knowledge bases (help user find information needed)

• alternate forms of knowledge representation (multiple representations of knowledge, e.g. video, audio, text, image, data).

Numerous types of physical technology are currently used: digital cameras, video cameras, interactive whiteboard tools, document cameras, electronic media, and LCD projectors. Combinations of these techniques include blogs, collaborative software, Portfolios, and virtual classrooms.

The current design of this type of application includes the evaluation through tools of cognitive analysis that allow to identify of which elements optimize the use of these platforms.

Many students often encounter trouble in listening to foreign people even though they are doing well in the English classroom. Some students complain to teachers that, although they can understand what ALTs (Assistant Language Teachers)' are saying because they speak slowly and clearly, they cannot understand what native English speakers are saying in real life. Why does this problem happen? What is wrong with the teaching of listening in Japanese schools? The first and probably the biggest problem is that, although the importance of listening skills is widely acknowledged in Japan. the adequate teaching and materials to develop them have not been provided. In a typical listening lesson, students either listen just to the taped script of a reading textbook or, after listening to some materials, they answer multiple choice questions based on the content of listening materials. In this kind of lesson,-correct answers are emphasized, but the listening process necessary to decode the information is ignored, and the kinds of skills and strategies for effective listening are not practiced. That is, students are just tested on their own ability to answer correctly and are not taught how to listen to English. Second, the amount of time for listening lessons is limited in English I and II, compared with reading, writing, and speaking. For example, it is estimated that the average time devoted to listening activities in every class is 5 minutes per day. Students are not sufficiently exposed to a variety of authentic materials, either. In short, although they are accustomed to English spoken clearly and slowly in classroom materials and can understand it, they get embarrassed and frustrated when they encounter real English which is spoken at a normal speed. Third, they are not used to the difference between spoken English and written English. Spoken English has different features such as ungrammatical utterances, false starts, hesitation, assimilation, and redundancy. If they aren't familiar with those phenomena, they may not be able to listen to English and understand it.