Foreign Language Learning with Digital Technology

Michael Evans, Sue Brindley, Michael Evans

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781441134622
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Didattica
• Subtopic: Didattica nell'arte e nelle discipline umanistiche

While digital technology is endlessly innovating and improving itself as a tool to support teaching and learning, the cognitive process of language learning itself remains perennially the same. However, digital technology has created new learning opportunities and introduces new elements into the cognitive process of foreign language learning. The contributors of this well-edited collection examine foreign language learning primarily from a user perspective and explore these underlying questions: How does digital technology support existing foreign language learning needs and processes? What new learning experiences does it entail for the learner? The book situates new insights into the value of digital technology for foreign language learning within the context of evidence from prior research and of educational policy-making and examines key pedagogical uses of digital technology in relation to effective foreign language learning by pupils. It provides an in-depth description of the use of a range of digital media and combines practical ideas for teaching and learning with critical analysis of evidence drawing on an analysis of technology-focused language learning across different sectors and in different anglophone contexts.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Notes on contributors
• Series editors’ foreword
• Introduction
• 1. Digital technology and language learning: a review of policy and research evidence
• 2. The potential of the internet as a language-learning tool
• 3. Trainee teachers’ perceptions of the use of digital technology in the languages classroom
• 4. Digital technology as a tool for active learning in MFL: engaging language learners in and beyond the secondary classroom
• 5. Engaging pupils in bilingual, cross-cultural online discourse
• 6. SIDE by side: pioneers, inventors and the tyranny of educational distance
• 7. Teacher and student perceptions of e-learning in EFL
• 8. From textbook to online materials: the changing ecology of foreign-language publishing in the era of ICT
• Conclusion: variations on a theme
• Glossary
• Index