Visualization- An Essential Method For Teaching Modern Languages
In
order to make a language class successful one has to try to match its
content with various methods aiming to make studying exciting and
engaging. The usage of modern technological equipment ought to be taken
in consideration when preparing teaching materials for a language
course.
Needless to say, one has to always keep in mind the following objectives when teaching a language class:
1. to develop the intellectual potential of the student
2. to raise his/her interest towards the culture and the civilization of the country whose language one teaches
3. to teach the student to decrypt the texts written in a foreign language
4. to
provide the student with procedures, means and methods that would make
him/her be able to communicate orally and in writing with a native
speaker
The
last objective can be reached by using CDs, where voices of native
speakers are recorded. It can be a vocabulary class, when a bingo game
is used to have the student match the picture with the name pronounced
by the virtual teacher; a grammar exercise where the sentence is built
as a puzzle; or a movie with subtitles that help the student at the
beginning level to better understand the language pronunciation. This
visualization tool helps students with both visual and non-visual minds.
When
teaching a language course using CDs, the teacher can easily find out
that the students are more prone to join debates and discussions at the
end of each activity. They try to recall what they just studied and
often attempt to mimic the models observed on the CDs with other peers.
In the process they often try to use the same pronunciation and imitate
the voice. As a result, one can notice that individual and collective
thinking become more developed. Consequently, one third of the work is
done by the student itself. The student becomes not only a recipient of
information, but also an active member of the group. He or she becomes
his or her own co-participant of the studying process.
Here,
one should also talk about the so-called programmed instruction, which
is performed independently by the student, under the teacher’s
supervision. The work in video and audio laboratories is a perfect
example. The student progresses in his/her own
rhythm. He/she establishes his/her own objectives and reaches them in
his/her own way. In case there are not enough computers, team work is
useful. Moreover, when this is a movie that needs to be discussed at
the end, the group or several small groups can be made up to achieve
the objectives. In these cases the teacher is required to have a rich
imagination and flexibility.
An
article of the Romanian magazine “Computer World” argues that the
benefits of computerized education are real: “We don’t have to ask
ourselves if the teaching process gets better by means of computerized
language methods utilization,” it claims. “It is obvious that the
methods of teaching are unconquerable: interactivity,
operational precision, capacity to offer multiple and dynamic
representations of different phenomenon. Also, there is a constant
interaction with every student.”
G.
de Landshere, a famous methodology expert, has been always pointing out
that the educational process needs to be always intense and has to be
inspired from the cognitive psychology. He has been striking the
importance of suppression of the routine methods by the modern
techniques. Speaking of this, it is opportune to affirm that the CDs
ensure the active construction of the knowledge, significant contexts
for learning, promoting reflection, absolving the student from routine
activities, stimulating his intellectual activity.
Modern pedagogy
has to research the experience of the European and American
professionals and try to understand why the new methods of teaching
modern languages using the software had such a great success there. The
foreign languages professors struggle to study the educational system
by formulating new problems that might appear at the social horizon and
they consider this as their important mission to experimentally verify
and prepare solutions for the moment when society reaches that horizon.
What
are the chances that this method has the same success everywhere? The
chances can be estimated only if the method is implemented in the
core-curriculum of the specific classes. The method was used in a case
study with one group of medical student form an University of Medicine
and Pharmacy. The outcome was plausible. Students got more interested
in the class, they shared their experience with the colleague from the
other faculties, and they asked me to keep using this method in the
next modules. The use of informatics tools and the use of the
visualization in the modern languages courses is the horizon of today’s
historical moment.
There
is an idea, entirely accepted by the specialists, that the educational
soft is classified accordingly to the specific pedagogical function to
have in the instruction process: exercise, interactive presentation of
knowledge, simulation of models and phenomenon, testing the abilities,
relaxation during the educational process due to game activities.
The studies made on the international lever lead to different important conclusions:
- the memorization time is reduced, the material is so interesting that the memorization happens in a shorter delay of time
- the attitude towards computer based education gets positively changed
- computer based education is more efficient as complementary instruction rather than an alternative form
- strategies base on the computer education are good enough for the elementary level of education as well as for the advanced one
Specialized
shops exhibit a variety of CDs that make us study various
conversational topics, new vocabulary, and dialogues, watch movies, and
play games. And all this for one purpose: to easier and better speak a
foreign language. The final result would be a diversification of the intellectual abilities, gathering of a new reserve of words. The
software presents images, songs, game animation, business discussions,
shopping and restaurant conversation situations, as well as maps of the
country whose language is to be studied. The maps are also sounded.
Pushing the image of a city the soft makes you listen to the
pronunciation of that very topographic name. These multimedia CDs are a
treasure and a condition sine qua non of a more productive and
efficient language learning.
To
sum up, let's point out that we have to keep insisting on the inclusion
of this modern method in the curricula of every faculty and struggle
against the unjustified fear towards new communication technologies in
order not to limit or stop the creative spirit of the professor and the
student.
Viorica Demici, MA American Studies
