Sunday
1:15 - 2:05 PM
Wild Rose
Using Web-based Activities for Teaching ESL
Christina Gitsaki, Nagoya University of Commerce and Business
Administration, Japan
Richard Paul Taylor, Nagoya City University, Japan
The use of the World Wide Web for teaching English as a second or foreign
language is becoming increasing popular. With most of the information on
web sites in English, the web offers an abundance of language teaching
resources and a wealth of information that teachers can use in order to
expose second/foreign language students to authentic language use. Exposure,
however, is not enough to trigger language acquisition. Students need to
be involved in meaningful tasks that integrate the use of information technology
in the language classroom with language acquisition. In the absence of
teacher guidance and student-centered tasks, the web sites will do very
little to help students learn English. This paper presents an instructional
system designed to guide ESL students through their exploration of the
WWW and help them carry out web-based projects that will ultimately help
them improve their reading and writing skills, enrich their vocabulary,
and practice English conversation.
Christina Gitsaki holds a Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from the
University of Queensland, Australia, and she is an Associate Professor
at the Nagoya University of Commerce and Business Administration in Aichi,
Japan. She teaches English Conversation, Computer Communication Skills,
E-mail Skills, International Business English and English through Electronic
Media. Her publications include papers in System, CALICO and ReCALL. Her
main research interests are in CALL, second language lexical acquisition,
and materials design.
Richard Paul Taylor holds an MA in Applied Linguistics from the
University of Southern Queensland, Australia, and he is a lecturer at the
Nagoya City University, in Aichi, Japan. He teaches English Conversation
and Computer Communication Skills. His main research interests are in the
areas of CALL and teaching methodology, and he has published with CALICO
and ReCALL. |