Using Multimedia in the Foreign Language Classroom | Page 6

Introduction

Once upon a time there was an English language teacher who wandered the

classrooms holding a state of the art technological innovation of that time, which was
no other than a tape recorder. The means changed the classroom context dramatically,
as it provided the chance for students to listen to native speakers talking, although the
language used was not always real. After that, we moved to DVD technology which
added image, adding the necessary paralinguistic features to spoken language which
facilitate communication. Today, all these and much more can be served through the
use of computers. The hardware is becoming cheaper and cheaper, which means that
more and more schools can afford it. In addition, more and more students have their
own computer at home, which means that they can use it for doing their homework as
well. The question which arises, of course, is how can computers be best exploited for
educational purposes in general and for English Language Teaching (ELT) in
particular.
The aim of this part of the present book is to discuss how the use of Computer
Assisted Language Learning (CALL) can become an innovative force in ELT, and
consists of two sections. Section I is theoretical, providing a rationale for an
appropriate exploitation of computers, while section II puts theory into practice by
providing a concrete example of such an exploitation in the form of a model lesson.

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