I come from Slovenia, a small country of about 2 million inhabitants. After achieving independence in 1991, Slovenia is one of the youngest and most certain one of the smallest countries in the world. Slovene is spoken by only two million people. Our language is beautiful, but not very easy to learn. We are surrounded by Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, and therefore obliged to learn foreign languages. English is taught in all the neighbouring countries, so it is wise to share the same second language. There are 434 central Primary Schools in Slovenia and it is obligatory for all pupils to start learning the first foreign language in the fifth grade of primary school, when they are ten or eleven years old. English is taught in more than 90% of all schools. German is taught in other schools. ABOUT SLOVENIA IN GENERAL In 1991 Slovenian Board of Education started to work on a so called “program of computer literacy” for pupils and teachers in the country. So far many good results have been achieved and the government has given a special sum of money for that purpose. Twenty-six central primary schools were chosen to organise and develop computer assisted learning or work in schools in Slovenia. (You can see them on the map below.) The schools cover different school subjects and activities where computers can be used as listed below: English language, history, geography, art, chemistry, testing, PE, Slovene Language, biology, craft, physics, international co-operation with primary schools, after school activities, multimedia, etc. .All the named schools organise the research work and involve also other schools if they are interested in or want to co-operate and prepare all the necessary materials for work. They are quite successful and innovative. The last but not the least there have been special CALL seminars for teachers of English organised twice by the Board of Education and guided by Mr Kettemann B from Grazz . More than 40 teachers have participated actively and now they try to imbed their knowledge in everyday school life. SOMETHING ABOUT MY WORK AND MY SCHOOL I will try to write about the use of a computer in my classroom and how I find it useful. I like to experiment with different methods, techniques and devices or means when teaching English at Primary School. Why? Maybe because students like changes or because changes make me think about new approaches and all these give me the opportunity to be more interesting as a teacher. I work as a teacher of English language at Solkan primary school. Solkan is a small town just beside the Italian border. there are about 800 pupils in our school where there are from 25 to 31 pupils in each class. English is taught from the third to the eight grade. A third of our pupils come from the surrounding villages, so their social background is quite different. Pupils are taught English through videos, games, songs, cassettes, course books and of course computer exercises, games and CD-roms. All the above mentioned devices help a lot when we want to motivate our pupils to learn better and in more interesting way. In my more than 20 years log work experience I tried different techniques and devices to achieve better results in teaching English, but I must admit that computer work was one of the most challenging. First of all I myself was interested in working on computer very much and later I discovered that pupils are even more interested in and skilful then we adults. Children like computers because they are always awarded by them if they do the task well and if they don’t know the answer they can tray it again and again without being punished or seen by the others. THE USE OF A COMPUTER IN THE CLASS TEACHER’S TOOL I think that computers are very useful because they can be either tools in the hands of a teacher or they can be used for the individualisation of work in the classroom. When used by the teacher, a computer:
STUDENT’S TOY On the other hand when they are used by students, they give them more opportunity to work individually. Students think that they are more productive, they like to compete with the computer and they don’t mind if they do the same exercise several times. As they say, nobody sees their mistakes and they can repeat the exercise if they want to without being told . When they use a computer they think they play and not learn, so this is not stressful for them. THE SOFTWARE PROBLEM When you have the right technology ( computers ) then there could be a problem of finding the good and useful applications for it. As far as I know CALL is quite appropriate and innovative. Why? Because it can be used immediately , you can easily imbed different programs into your lessons by using the right methodological and didactic means. You can also authorise them and they become more useful for your own teaching purposes. That means they can be directly connected and used along with your student’s book. TRY AND YOU’LL SEE Unfortunately many teachers are afraid of this new technology, although it isn’t so difficult to learn how to handle it. We must be aware that our students have computers at home and that they can help us. Their contribution can be very useful and they will be more interested in us and of course in learning English. So it is worth trying. HOW I ORGANISE THE COMPUTER WORK IN MY CLASSES At my school I can organise computer work in the English classroom where we have only one computer, but seven monitors for the students. I can do this in two ways. 1. I can divide students into different groups and they do different pre- or post- computer work, while one group of three students work at the computer. So I plan different activities involving computer work. 2. Or I can work at the computer and students follow my work on the seven monitors that are placed in the middle of the classroom. They can also make suggestions or give the right answers, or they can do the writing exercise. We can also go to the computer room, where there are 16 computers and two students work together at one computer. The computers are linked together as a Network, but they can also work by themselves. This way the work is more interesting for the students, because they are all actively involved and they somehow work both in a group and individually IS COMPUTER WORK ONLY WRITING - READING ORIENTED ? All these activities can be done together with a cassette-recorder or video recorder if you have the texts audibly or video recorded. I use this combination with more advanced students for extra lessons ( grade 7, 8 ). SOMETHING ABOUT SOFTWARE ( PROGRAMS ) I have got different computer programs:
All the mentioned programs are very useful in my classes from grade 3 to grade 8. I use them either for drilling grammatical items (e.g. Higgins - plurals), for introducing new structures or reviewing. GOOD-BAD POINTS I think that good points of all these programs involve mostly students’ opinion. They like to use a computer, they have to be very precise in spelling, they can choose the type and the degree of the exercise, they can repeat them all over again if they want and they can use different helps ( like hints , keys and so on ). All the students are engaged at the same time . Bad points are maybe that they don’t speak or communicate with classmates although they have to arrange their work by themselves. If a teacher wants to use a computer programs, he/she needs to know the programs well and he/she must be familiar with the computer, while students don’t need to know a lot about computers. They have to know how to type and use the arrow keys. The teacher should give them good instructions and help them if they need help. Some of them will be very happy, because they will probably use the computer for the first time. CD -ROMs Today I must say technology has changed so much that with the use of CD-roms we can learn English interactively. We can even record our own answers and compare them with those in the program. So all the four skills reading, writing, listening and speaking are included. So I started my first lesson with the help of computer nearly eight years ago. I started with a group of more skilful students of grade seven and eight and it was a success. Students liked it so much that we had to do it more often. At the beginning I used Commodore and we did the exercises like “catch the verb,” etc. programmed by Slovene authors. A few yyears ago our school equipped a special classroom with 6 PC computers and from then on we worked on them using the software of John and Muriel Higgins given as a gift to all the students and teachers of Eastern Europe and being distributed with the help of Bristol University and the British Council. Then I moved to Solkan school where there are even better conditions for my work. Meanwhile our school succeeded to buy more modern computers for the use in the classrooms and in the staff rooms for teachers use. Now we have a lot PC in total that are distributed in different places. Three classrooms are specially equipped for multimedia use, that means there are Pentiums or PC 486 with multimedia equipment connected with 7 monitors for the pupils as you can see below in the picture. Software programs:
A computer - a tool in the hands of a teacher or a device for pupils We use computers in language learning for:
I should say that the use of multimedia for me is very intersting for all the pupils from grade 3 to 8 and what is important more and more good and useful CD-ROMs are available on the market now. So my aim in using a computer in the classroom is now concentrated on CD-ROM technology because I’m convinced that this is really a device that combines computer work as well as all the four skills and it can be more interesting than the traditional software. CD-ROMS are a combination of good texts, excellent graphic, recorded voices, video clips, animation and an interesting way of covering one point on more than one level. If you have a good appropriate CD-ROM you don’t need neither a book nor a video or cassette recorder. And what is more important they are easy to use. It is nice because it works so fast and it can easily jump from one activity to the other. Pupils are fascinated because you can easily change the situation on the screen and the computer gives you additional and more interesting information. I have got many different CD-ROMs that are useful for Engllish lessons and I find them useful in the early English learning classes. By Viljenka Šavli, Solkan Primary School |
(c) Viljenka Šavli
07.12.2007