Why are new technologies really necessary to learn foreign languages?

Is known that new technologies (NT) are a good way to make new friends, to open our minds, to access to every kind to information or simply to fight boredom. But we must know, as teachers, that new technologies can offer a lot of options that we should use to make our lessons meaningful and interesting.

DOES IT MEAN THAT NEW TECHNOLOGIES ARE THE ONLY WAY?

No. What I want you to think about is that we should combine every resources that we can to make the most useful learning.

We should not forget that NT are comfortable for us as teachers. Maybe at firsts moments they carry a lot of work because we don't know how to use it, but them have a lot of advantages. We just need to try to do it and don’t be close-minded to learn.

Now I am going to talk about a few of these advantages:

• Kids see NT as something very closer to them. Is a way to camouflage the learning, to mix the game and the learning into something that could become in an interesting experience.
• Sometimes when we think in NT in classrooms we only think on computers; but we should think that kids could use tablets too (that are cheaper for the schools) or even smartphones. As usual, pre-primary kids don't have its own mobile phone, but they can have apps specially thought for them on its parents' phones.
• In the same sense that in the previous advantage, tablets and smartphones are easier to carry, so it could be a good way to avoid the heavy books
• We should think that we are in a technological society and we should pull on the same direction. It's worthless to force them to make all type of traditional exercises if nowadays these are obsoleting.

• NT open up doors to a lot of activities. They can learn by touching the screens, they can move elements sliding a finger over a screen, they can change colours and sizes of different elements, etc.
• NT is a synonym of share, because it permits to exchange information, apps, games, photographs, videos and all you can imagine.

If you want to know more about this topic, you can click on this links:

• https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/the-benefits-new-technology-language-learning (another benefits)

A video made by the University of Birmingham talking about the e-learning and Virtual Learning Enviroments.

Ideas about how educators can incorporate technology into the classroom to serve ELL's

THANKS FOR READING