Tuesday, April 12, 2011

CALL- Online Language Learning Enhance Grammar Competence in School

Expertise skills in teaching have moved to enlarge the thoughtful of new generation. Nowadays, the rote-learning slightly has already gone and it is replaced with self-centred where the students are trained to think on their own of what they have learnt. Technologies invented help students to boost their knowledge of what they can get outside from the textbooks. The role of the teacher is to facilitate and train them to empower the skills needed especially grammar. This topic catches my attention where I believe teaching skills need to be improved in order to make sense for a new young generation. It is one alternative assessment option if only to distinguish from the traditional formal teaching in school. Self and peer assessment might be considered as an absurd reversal of the teaching-learning process. The students will be going to be motivated to learn on their own at their own pace. Variety of websites is available on the internet readily to be used and the users can use them repeatedly. It is found that independent variable of this topic is online language learning and the dependent variable is grammar competence in school.
An experiment was done by Herman (2007), as he conducted “Computer-Assisted Instruction in Beginning College German”. He believes that the objectives are to improve the teaching and to encourage more students learning with the help of a computer. The other four articles also shared same objectives which are to see how significant online learning might improve grammar competence among the students. The research questions are mainly on how the writer can stimulate students’ interest for subjects by using computer. The experiment used college students as subject and ten modules of computer-assisted instruction as a substitute for traditional learning. The purpose is to find ways of self-learning to prepare them for examination. The students took the test at the beginning of the semester for comparison and the results prove the experiment achieve better.
According to Thevy (2006), she quotes that based on a study carried out by Dataramani et al. (1999) at the City University of Hong Kong to ascertain the needs of the learners and to investigate their attitudes and motivation towards the self-access mode of learning, the use of computers appears to be one of the most ideal medium through which students can be encouraged to carry out practice activities. Grogorio (2005), also stated the use of e-learning tools may be implemented in an independent way in the multimedia language laboratory with no relation whatsoever with further face-to-face learning processes in institutions like university. A team of facilitators need to be escort to have a centre where the team will assist self-students in developing their independent-study programmes by monitoring their correct activation of learning strategies in this process.
Most of the these methods which have been used have many similarities: (1) the student uses a monitor with a keyboard or a teletype which also provides immediate hard copy for the student to keep and review; (2) the computer gives the student immediate feedback in the form of reinforcement or assistance; (3) the student continues through the program at his or her own pace; and (4) the computer usually keeps a record of the student's work by filing information such as number of correct responses, time on task, types of errors, or number of units completed. Clearly then, some of the practice drill and record keeping could be taken out of the classroom and replaced by conversational activities or written application of the grammar or computer sessions.
The study conducted by Reima (2005) found that, hers subjects learning environment is not suitable to EFL students and instructors due to the lack use the technology. She is the only one researcher that i found who could not find the objective through her research where the lack of facilities in her own place. But she supports the use of an online course from home as a supplement to in-class techniques helps motivate and enhance EFL students' learning and mastery of English grammar. Hsien-Chin L., Samuel H. W., and Yuli H. Y. (2008) designed an experimental study in which two groups of college freshman EFL majors did the pre-test and post-test tasks with ten-week CALL intervention for the experiment group while the control group worked on the same contents in a paper and pen homework setting. The results proved that the combined effect of classroom instruction and grammatical CALL is helpful for writing instruction, or at least not negative

The practice explained suggests mechanisms for the creation of online learning in second language really helps students to develop their competence and perform well in classroom by drawing upon Internet tools. This use of Internet to combine the lexical and grammatical competence of ESL students happens to be particularly ample for students who are unable to perform themselves to traditional classroom learning. Focusing on grammar and vocabulary within larger processes of ESL learning at class, this experience has shed light on the new roles that teachers and students may perform when actively drawing upon online learning tools for learning ESL and other languages. This model may therefore be applied in further areas of ESL teaching-and-learning processes, such as reading and listening comprehension, writing and speaking, etc. 

Works Cited

Al-Jarf, R. S. (2005). The Effects of Online Grammar Instruction on Low Proficiency EFL. The Asian EFL Journal Quarterly.
Retrieved from http://www.asian-efl journal.com/December05PDF%20issue.pdf
Gregorio-Godeo, E. d. (2005). Drawing upon e-learning tools in English-as-a-Foreign-.
Hsien-Chin Liou, S. H.-Y. (2008). CAN GRAMMATICAL CALL HELP.
Rajaretnam, T. (2006). Using Online Grammar Quizzes for Language Learning.
Teichert, H. U (2007). COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION IN BEGINNING COLLEGE GERMAN: AN EXPERIMENT.

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