ESL in Saudi Arabia - Term Paper Example

Introduction Educational institutions are teaching about the rest of the world in a superficial manner however students need a deeper knowledge on global trends in science and technology. When teaching students about the world, it should be integrated in all subjects they are learning by being motivated by educators. As shown in the examined scenario planning with Seattle school, it is apparent things became better for the students as far as the educational resources, and environment, which ultimately affects the learning process. Educational institutions must engage partnerships with other schools around the world. By providing student exchanges they will produce world class students, the internet is facilitating the process of globalization and providing virtual interaction with others. As it is shown in the Seattle schools, technology is the key to change the educational environment and resources. The internet is encouraging students to engage in meaningful cross cultural dialogue and mutual learning about how issues of race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, national origin, social class, and age influence the interaction of different cultures living together. In order to teach ESL to students who require ESL learning or could benefit from it, the teacher should use the following technologies Computer-mediated communication (CMC) use in language education have addressed aspects of context in language learning and teaching, including technologies. The occurrence of social interactions in language learning needs to be understood in relation to the broad cultural and social contexts shaping situations (Shin 2006) However, as shown in the scenario planning for Seattle school, the class faced problems in securing a place to meet comfortably and conveniently for an entire semester. While trying to find such a place, the teacher found that most of the students were comfortable communicating with family members and friends in their countries via e-mail, and that many of them had had online chatting experiences. He suggested that online chatting through a free instant messaging tool would help solve the problem of arranging a physical space for extracurricular social gatherings. The students liked the idea of getting together in a virtual space3. For CMC meetings, the participants used MSN Instant Messenger™, a free CMC tool for those who subscribe to MSN or Hotmail (Shin 2006). With the scenario planning for Seattle schools, it has become clear that technology was the best solution help the educational process. Therefore, the Internet is gaining popularity in second language teaching while reshaping computer mediated communication in language learning. Students will need to learn how to deal with large amounts of information and be able to communicate across languages and cultures. From there, teachers are no longer the only source of information so that students can actively interpret and organize the information they are given, fitting it into prior knowledge (Dole, Duffy, Roehler, & Pearson, 1991). “Contributing to previous studies of CMC contexts, this study contends that one also needs to see the configured context co-constructed by language learners to fully capture the complexity of CMC practices, since the context for any learning activity is an interconnected relationship among contextual elements of the learning environment that learners configure for learning tasks. This perspective of context is anchored to ecological perspectives of language learning (Kramsch, 2002; Leather & van Dam, 2003; van Lier, 2000, 2002), which allow researchers and teachers to avoid rigid conceptions of learning and its contexts. Ecologically exploring the ways in which learning contexts are jointly configured within group dynamics by participants illustrates their identities/subjectivities regarding co-constructed norms, rules, and goals, as well as specific interests and concerns embedded in their language socialization processes through CMC. Ecological perspectives are not only concerned with participants' online lives, but their offline lives, too. Examining how language learners carry their interests and life stories over to online language learning spaces requires more research into how online and offline lives of participants are interconnected, while shaping affordances regarding their CMC activities (Lam, 2000, 2004; Leander & McKim, 2003; Ware, 2005; Shinn 2006). Students have become active participants in learning and are encouraged to be explorers and creators of language. (Chieh Lu 2006). Language With that in mind, it is apparent that thought and language are considered distinct because they are a part of the learning process. From there, thought is in the center pf language because it helps to maintain unity, continuity, and relevance; and language, which is a symbolic system used to refer to thought. Along with that, research on memory and recall are also presented. Furthermore, within these findings, examples from the experiments and a bibliography are provided (Lado). Within ESL learning, this is very important because no matter how people learn from teachers or technology, this process is the same. However, with the ESL technology, memory and recall are more effective for the student because they are more actively involved with what they are learning. From there, it has been discovered that language faculty can both be a marginal component of the mind and be momentously implicated in a variety of central cognitive functions, including conscious propositional thinking and reasoning (Carruthers). From there, there have been further answers that have been discovered. It is apparent thought is very important to language because without the ability to think, language could not be developed especially in a logic form. If people cannot form logic, it is apparent they cannot think naturally. Along with that, if the thought process is broken up, meaning only a few words can be formed, the language is broken up as well, which means thought and language has a strong relationship that cannot be separate (Catmur 2007). “It might then be claimed that some (or all) conceptual, propositional, thinking consists in the formation and manipulation of these LF representations. In particular, it could be that tokening in an LF representation is what renders a given content explicit (in the sense of Karmiloff-Smith, 1992) ? that is, which serves make it generally inferentially available (or ?promiscuous?) outside of its given cognitive domain, having the potential to interact with a wide range of central cognitive operations. On this account, it would not just be some (conscious) thought tokens which constitutively involve natural language representations; but certain explicit thoughts, as types, would involve such sentences (Carruthers 2001). Two languages are used for academic instruction. There are roughly two groups of students: children who are monolingual English speakers and ELL students (Howard & Christian, 2002; Lindholm-Leary, 2004), which remain together during the majority of the school day for content-area and literacy instruction (Calhoon, Mary Beth ; Al Otaiba, Stephanie ; Cihak, David ; King, Amber ; Avalos, Annalise 2007). Today’s English teachers have an easier way into the Kingdom. The country’s leaders recognize the essential role of English in their attempts to integrate with the global economy and are actively promoting English programs. Saudis learn English for career advancement, for pleasure, and for day-to-day communications with expatriate workers. ESL teachers work in Saudi schools and universities, in businesses, in the military, and in private homes (Koolmees). Language is only one factor that influences cognition and behavior. In other words, people only can learn one way, which is simply not true. Secondly, if the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis were really true, second language learning and translation would be far harder than they are. Children in school are required to take a second language. With that, it is clear that this theory can be proven false. Furthermore, it can be proven that language is so pervasive due to the fact that people must always make cognitive decisions while speaking. Finally, weaker versions of the hypothesis will continue to attract scientific attention (Sapir). Another example where that could be proven wrong is that within ESL learning, the listening skill has a lot of activities on ESL/EFL websites for the learner to practice. This would involve using pronunciation clinics and listening to English by radio, to the weekly news, to poetry in English, and to songs and movies (Kung & Chuo 2002). From there, with the second skill is speaking the Internet has opened a variety of choices, besides speaking in traditional classrooms. Learners and teachers can speak through audio-chat rooms, telecommunication conferences, Internet phone activities, and message and discussion board as communication tools. From there, teachers who did not have the chance to complete their classroom discussion due to the shortage of time had another chance by doing so on the discussion forums on the ESL/EFL websites. This was an example from my own experience back in college in Saudi Arabia, that due to the shortage of the class time, the professor was unable to complete his lesson and therefore assigned us to meet on-line on his website www.abureesh.net, on the same day to complete his lesson. Audio chat rooms are also a way of speaking and debating about various topics or issues, which gives the students more than one way to learn (Singhal, 1997). One advantage for researchers of looking at the social interactions that take place as students learn is that the conversations among students are themselves useful data sources. Thus, discourse analysis can shed light on the processes and products of learning (Herrenkohl et al., 1999; Herrenkohl and Guerra, 1998). A good example of this is the Knowledge Integration Environment (KIE) project (Linn et al., 1998). KIE is a web-based environment that allows students to post evidence and arguments for competing scientific theories. It consists of a number of tools that guide students to information that can be construed as evidence, assembled, and made public. Used with appropriate classroom activities, these tools can generate discourse that not only involves students in serious debate about the content and nature of science, but also reveals a lot about how students’ concepts and beliefs about science change (Winn). The reading skill is also carried out on the Internet through a lot of activities, which includes the Scavenger Hunt activity and that is an activity that requires a lot of reading (Lee, 2000). The Finding Favorites activity is when each student chooses a topic of special interest and searches the Internet for three websites that are related to that interest. They read the material, and downloads one or two pages from the site to the Favorites folder. The students make two reports written or orally to the class. The first report is an evaluation of the websites. Along with that, the second is a summary of the main information that was collected. This activity goes along with three other skills: reading, writing, and speaking hours. In the online chat interactions of the ESL class, a couple of face-saving strategies occurred as collaborative work orchestrated by the teacher and the students together. One of the strategies identified was commiseration through sharing identical or similar experiences. One example of this kind of strategy was found in the teacher’s effort to save his students’ face. The teacher reported that the students were concerned with making mistakes in FtF discussions due to their lack of English skills and inexperience with speaking in English. He mentioned that he was also careful about allowing his adult ESL students to feel "embarrassed" in front of other classmates. The teacher’s efforts to support the students in saving face regularly guided their chat interactions, as seen in the following extract (Shin 2006): The writing skill is incorporated into many other activities. A student can engage in an audio-textual chat room. They must listen or read the statement said or written in order to write and reply back. This goes along with the Finding activity that was mentioned previously. With that in mind, E-mails are also another form of writing. Since this is true, a learner must organize his/her thoughts and write them down in complete sentences, which enables students to free-write without any impositions (Singhal, 1997). Another activity to encourage students is for them to create their own web pages in English and publish them on a class website. At this point, the teacher will may decide on the theme and the design of the site (Lee, 2000). In order to reduce the fear of making more mistakes, a teacher can go over the students’ work with them/ before it is published on the website because the best part of this project is the students’ knowledge that the pages they composed will be on the Internet.. Technology Our students live in a globalized world and our schools must adapt instruction to harmonize learning in today’s environment. Globalization and rapid technology changes have impacted the educational system; thus, the necessity for a constant curriculum improvement on language training, technology based education and instruction in cultural awareness. The needed information that students will have to acquire goes farther than the current knowledge that American schools offer; basic knowledge of math, science and technology are not enough to compete in the new globalized world. Students must be educated about the world and capable of communicating with others in different languages. Within the classroom, the use of Internet content outweighs the disadvantages and obstacles even though technology should not take over the language classroom. It must be allow educators to do things which they are unable to do themselves, or improve what is currently being done in the classroom (Singhal, 1997). The participants held Web-based chat meetings once a week for about one and a half hours every Sunday night. In CMC meetings, the teacher managed chat sessions without logging onto the chat program. The FtF meetings happened twice a week on Monday and Wednesday nights in a university classroom, which lasted two and a half hours. The setting was a university classroom with desks, a blackboard at the front, and a whiteboard on the side (Shin 2006) From there, the participants discussed the benefits and drawbacks of the chat session. They reported such constraints as fast turn formation, written text as a main mode of communication, and discontinuous communication with disrupted interactions (see also Negretti, 1999). The participants also reported opportunities/benefits such as being free from the need to go to a physical space, no need to worry about pronunciation, and the ability to review ways of speaking with the saved chat dialogues for their language learning (Shin 2006) The new chat format changed the dynamics of interactions among the participants. When the participants planned their CMC activities, it led them to think of informal social gatherings that resembled "a tea party" with multiple small conversations. Their informal chat changed into a formal class meeting within the dynamics of their group. The participants discussed possible ways of reducing frustration and problems stemming from a lack of structure. As teacher and students took responsibility for changing their CMC activities, the teacher's role changed more than the students. This is due to the fact they are taking on responsibilities of sending out a pre-selected topic for each meeting, and opening and managing chat rooms. By taking on a manager’s role, the teacher filled long waiting periods between turns-at-talk that resulted primarily from the participants’ slow typing skills and limited English proficiency. From there, they co-constructed their online chat interactions was based on social roles that they played in the community of CMC practices (Shin 2006) The way the participants restructured and utilized their CMC activities for their life goals demonstrates the complexity of understanding CMC uses in language education in relation to social, cultural, linguistic, material, and discursive contexts. Also, the findings show how the participants construed contextual elements and constructed the context of their learning based on active perceptions of and engagement with the environment of the learning activity. Their perceptions of contextual elements and actions in the learning task represent core tenets of ecological perspectives, which argue against static, essentialized views of learning (Shin 2006). The participants’ learning experience demonstrated that language learning and language socialization are interwoven into the fabric of CMC practices. Due to the ways that the participants utilized CMC activities and constructed their learning experiences correlated closely with their professional roles. Even though the CMC tool helped the participants to solve the problem of securing physical classroom space for their social gatherings, the required typing skills and written English proficiency for synchronous CMC meetings were beyond the intermediate English proficiency level of many of the participants in this study (Shin 2006). These requirements discouraged and prevented the spousal participants from joining the CMC meetings. However, to those spousal participants who planned to attend graduate school, use of a CMC tool had investment value, because they needed to acquire expertise in typing and reading English in order to study in an American graduate program. They persevered in their CMC activities and overcame gate-keeping barriers, unlike the other spousal participants who did not see any investment value regarding their CMC activities (Shin 2006). These participants were engaged in widened the division among academic and non-academic participants, which became a social space for academic gatherings. The CMC tool in this study privileged academic professionals who were more experienced working with computers and producing written English. It is necessary to regard language learning through the CMC tool as a social practice that has discursive meanings for those who use the tool and develop its literacy (Shin 2006) Many technology-supported learning environments simulate some aspect of the natural environment. This allows learning to be “authentic,” engaging students in projects that have some meaningful connection with problems that exist in the real, nonsimulated world. Because most authentic real-world activities involve more than one person, it follows that most technology-supported learning environments include people in addition to the student, confirming that learning occurs socially. Current theories of learning and instruction acknowledge the social natural of learning (Vygotsky, 1978). Many current educational research projects study social interaction as a promoter of learning, often through the agency of learning communities created with the Internet (Gordin et al., 1996: Malarney, 2000 Winn). Conclusion There is a growing demand for ESL teachers in Saudi Arabia because English is becoming a second language due to modern technology and business within the country. There are a lot of activities on ESL/EF the learner to practice, which uses the four steps of ESL so that the learners can improve their skills by engaging in such activities (Kung & Chuo 2002). The number of teachers using Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) has increased markedly and numerous articles have been written about the role of technology in education. It is obvious that we have entered a new information age in which the links between technology and TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) have already been established (Lee, 2000). “Additionally, expanding conceptions of context for CMC activities as language socialization practices entails an understanding of language learners’ complex lives, a complexity that comes from multiple social roles, providing the participants with different affordances for their CMC activities. In this vein, this study demonstrated how people are discursively placed in certain subject positions according to gender, profession, age, language, and class in their uses of CMC tools, especially when language educators use CMC tools in various social and educational settings outside higher educational institutions in which the participants are less homogeneous in terms of their social roles and positions. It suggests that studies of CMC uses in language education need to examine language acquisition and language socialization as inextricably intertwined entities” (Shin 2006). The Internet has caused a revolution that could help within the ESL classroom.(Chieh Lu 2006). Reference: Kung, S. C. & Chuo, T.W. (2002). Students’ perceptions on English learning through ESL/EFL websites. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. 6, No. 1, June 2002. Retrieved February 18, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://www-writing.berkeley.eduuu/tesl-ej/ej21/a2.html Lee, K. W. (2000). Energizing the ESL/EFL classroom through Internet activities. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. VI, No. 4, April 2000. Retrieved February 18, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://iteslj.org/articles/lee-internetactivites.html Singhal, M. (1997). The Internet and foreign language education: Benefits and challenges. The Internet TESL Journal, Vol. III, No. 6, June 1997. Retrieved February 18, 2007, from the World Wide Web: http://iteslj.org/articles/singhal-internet.html Winn, William. (2002). Current Trends in Educational Technology Research: The Study of Learning Environments. Educational Psychology Review, Vol. 14, No. 3, September 2002. Lado, Robert. The Relationship of Thought and Memory in Linguistic Performance. Eric Journal. 54. Shin, Doug-Shin. (2006). ESL STUDENTS' COMPUTER-MEDIATED COMMUNICATION PRACTICES: CONTEXT CONFIGURATION. Retrieved January 19, 2008, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/shin/default.html Read More