Functions of Modern Equipment in Classroom(英语)
Functions of Modern Equipment in Classroom
The 21st century is a brilliant and glorious century in which
By media we mean all aids which may be used by teachers and learners to attain certain educational objectives. Only those electric teaching equipment which has a direct contribution to make to the teaching process will be discuss. We should devote ourselves to the use of media in the classroom. We should discuss the use of media in the various forms of distance study such as language courses on radio or television. Various considerations have traditionally led people to advocate the use of media in foreign language learning. The developments can be attributed on the one hand to technological innovations which continued to expand the range of reliable land accessible media and another important factor is constituted by the changes in education itself, e.g. Now we will discuss the different teaching machines used in English teaching.
Auditory media.
There is considerable agreement on the positive role of auditory media in foreign language teaching and it can also be observed that hardly any new points of view have been advanced in the last few years. There is a great variety of auditory media available today. At a time when oral skills feature prominently in foreign language teaching objectives, it is hardly surprising that such media as radios, tape recorders, televisions and video recorders receive considerable attention. The use of such media requires a specific type of course material. Although especially in the early days by the teachers themselves, it is a fact that the construction of high-quality course materials requires such an extensive investment of time and such a degree of expertise that this will often have to be done by experts, in collaboration with teachers. In auditory teaching equipment, we can fin many advantages. (1) In class, auditory media offer students the opportunity to practise with spoken materials without the teacher or some other ‘informant’ being present; this can even be done outside the classroom. (2) The voice of many native speakers can be presented in class, with any desired variation with respect to age, rate of speech, clarity of diction, situational context and type of language use. (3) They can present an invariable model for tasks involving frequent repetition, in for instance pronunciation correction, resolving difficulties in understanding spoken texts, and providing feedback in pattern drills. The model may be presented as frequently as necessary without any change in quality; (4) Media which can record sound make it possible to check students utterances, which allows a certain degree of objectiveness in testing and evaluation to be achieved. The recorded utterances are then also available for later use, for instance for subsequent evaluation by external judges.
Summarizing, we can say that generally in foreign language teaching the auditory media are of inestimable value. They can present spoken texts and provide opportunity for practicing with them. They supplement the teacher with regard to his oral proficiency and may also make his physical presence superfluous at certain moments. This makes it possible for a student to practise at his own speed and as long a she wants to. That these factors do not apply to all media in the same way will become clear in the following paragraphs, where we will deal with each of the auditory media separately.
Radio.
The radio is an important source of high-quality materials. Interviews, news broadcasts, quizzes, etc. make an enormous variety of language material available which is very useful in teaching. The disadvantage of such material is that very often it has to be edited for classroom use, while the advantage is that because it is topical and authentic, students find it motivating. The amount and variety of topical and authentic material the teacher may record from radio broadcasts could never be equaled in commercial publishing.
The flexibility of the radio as a teaching aid may be increased significantly, and a considerable degree of editing and preparation by the teacher becomes possible, if radio programmes are not presented directly as they are broadcast, but recorded on tape. The great advantage of tape-recorded material is that especially repetition and exploitation can be arranged more flexibly.
The main function of radio programmes in foreign language teaching is that they can be used in training listening proficiency, as a basis for conversational activities, and as a means to improve cultural background knowledge.
Tape recorder.
Tape recorders, as we have already seen, play a supporting role in the use of radio programmes. In classroom, using tape recorders can remedy teachers’ defect in pronunciation. It can make students imitate the standard British and American intonation and also it can activate the atmosphere of classroom teaching. The tape recorder is the most widely usable auditory medium. It can be used in all phases of the cycle of teaching activities, can both reproduce and record spoken language, can be used for individual as well as for group work, it is flexible, and it is not very expensive. Furthermore, a large quantity of course materials suitable for the tape recorder is available, and it is relatively easy to develop one’s own materials for it. The technical qualities of most tape recorders are such that high quality recording and reproduction, which are indispensable in foreign language teaching, are guaranteed. Although speech contains a lot of redundant information which a trained listener does not need to be able to understand what is being said, in English teaching most students are not trained listeners. The students will have to be able to receive all of the information as fully as possible. The same demands of technical excellence also apply to microphones, headphones, speakers and tapes, and it goes without saying that tape recorders should be so easy to operate that they disrupt the teaching process as little as possible.
Language laboratory
The foundation of language laboratory is based on the theory of psychology. The development of the language laboratory is closely related to the development of the tape recorder, which is the central piece of equipment in language laboratories. Today language laboratories occupy a position within the whole range of audiovisual media which is rather different from what it was a few decades ago. After the boom of the 1960s, and a subsequent relatively general rejection of this number of readers and monographs in the 1970s. In the literature of the last few years, we find predictions of a ‘resurrection’ of language laboratories, albeit in a somewhat different form and under somewhat different circumstances. By language laboratories we mean mechanical and electronic equipment which makes it possible for spoken language to be presented in such a way that students can react to it individually, all at the same time. It can remove any obstacles and make every student concentrate attention on listening and practising. Language laboratory provides convenience to English teaching, and it can make teachers teach students in accordance with their aptitude and also it can develop students’ listening, speaking, reading and writing. During the teaching, the teacher can talk with any student; a student also talk with the others. The teacher can monitor the students at any time. The students can usually also be monitored individually by the teacher. For a student, he can record his own voice independently of the group. For a teacher, he can monitor the students’ utterances. In a language laboratory students have headphones with a microphone, which means that they can hear their own voices undistorted. This also makes it possible for the teacher to play back the voices of each individual student. It supplements the possibilities for the recording of eh utterances of individual students with some facilities for self-correction on the part of the students, and for correction of the utterances produced by individual students by the teacher. All in all, the language laboratory can be effective in learning in terms of the repetition and overlearning of behavior patterns that are to become habitual. The advantage of the machine over the living person for purposes of sustained repetition is obvious: the machine can repeat in identical fashion what was said before, and it can do so without fatigue or irritation(Books 1964: 189).
Auditory equipment can only be used successfully and efficiently, if certain conditions are fulfilled. These first of all concern the equipment itself(such technical aspects as ease of operation and reliability), organizational aspects(such as accessibility and maintenance) and financial aspects. Secondly, teachers are needed who know how to use the media efficiently. So teachers must first of all be familiar with the possibilities and limitations of the media which are used in foreign language teaching; an awareness of the possibilities and impossibilities may prevent some disappointments. Such awareness enables teachers to judge the relevance of the main functions of auditory media for his own teaching. Auditory media can be used for presentation, repetition and exploitation, fro training listening and speaking skills, but also for dictation, spelling exercises and various other aspects of writing, as well as for the testing of these skills. Whether they are used or not will depend, as we have argued earlier, on the objectives of he teaching programme. An auditory medium like the tape recorder is not maximally useful for the teaching of meaning, if it is not supported by visual media, but it is eminently suited for the presentation of spoken texts, for repetition exercises, for pattern drills, and for guiding oral productive language use.
Visual equipment.
The visual element has long played an important role in foreign language teaching. In classroom the teachers often use slide projectors and projecting apparatus which are economical and practical. They give students some vivid and colorful pictures. They can cause the students’ interest and draw students’ attention. The teachers can exert the equipment to present and explain new language materials and check the students. By using the equipment, students can retell the texts, which will help improve students’ ability of speaking. Now the visual equipment is no longer just a means of making foreign language teaching more lively, to intensify it, and add some frills to it (mainly to motivate the students), but they have now also acquired the function of ‘didactic intermediary’ in the sense that they can be used to provide prestructured guidance of the students’ use of an L2 structure through a visual representation of that structure.
There is considerable agreement in the literature on the positive effect which the use of visual media has on our teaching. But it is also generally agreed that a number of conditions must be met if the use of visual media is to be effective. The visual equipment is all easily available and adaptable. That is to say, a great variety of such aids can be bought because they are relatively inexpensive, which in turn makes them more flexible for use in teaching. Another important aspect of visual aids of this kind is that they do not date very quickly, which makes them rather more usable than other types. Many of such aids can be made by us.
Audiovisual equipment
The combination of sound and image and the use of rather expensive equipment characterize audiovisual media in the narrow sense of the word, namely films, TV and video. The presentation of moving pictures is one of moving pictures is one of the most important differences between these and other media. This makes it possible to achieve a considerable degree of contextualization, i.e. presentation of authentic language use in real situations. One of the main disadvantages of this type of material is, however, that it dates very quickly as a result of technical, political and cultural developments.
In English teaching, a number of multi-media systems are employed. Characteristic of multi-media packages is the functional division of the various media over the various parts of the course and the different phases of the teaching and learning process. Sometimes the media are used separately, sometimes in combination with each other. In the multi-media approach textbooks retain their central function of setting out the structure of the course, and of providing the link between the media.
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