Technology In Language

It is an undeniable fact that technology touches almost everybody’s lives in some way in our current “modern” era. What can be counted as a part of technology dates back to the first computers, which occupy almost a room. From those times till today when we actually need only a smartphone, technology has gone through several significant steps including the foundation of Apple Inc., developments in Android and numerous computer programs. Some of them proved to be beneficial while the others seemed to have certain disadvantages. On the other hand, through the rise of technology, a great number of technological developments has occurred in educational areas. As we all know and repeat all the time, teachers need to keep up with the current trends

When the primary consideration is education, there is an inevitable need to mention foreign language education, too. As the countries’ relations has increased a lot all around the world and English has become the “lingua franca” spoken by both native and non-native speakers, teaching and learning that language has become important as well. Pursuant thereto, as it happened in the other areas, language education has gone through tens and thousands crucial steps in terms of methods, activities and materials just to name a few. Therefore, the purpose of this paper will be the integration of technology into language education. Upon providing a brief introduction to how technology and language education go hand in hand, it is beneficial to mention the history of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) and some popular online tools for teaching/learning English. To begin with, people first searched for new ways of learning. That purpose in mind, they have begun using computers for their own benefits since 1970s with the help of CD-ROMs and floppy disks.

Firstly, because of the fact that computers make learning easier, the students might feel the sense of laziness. Namely, they may forget how they learnt in the past in a traditional way. Secondly, technology integration may trigger the addiction for a virtual world, which eventually brings about harmful addiction. Thirdly, even if we as teachers assign a task related to the lesson, the students’ focus might be on an entirely irrelevant thing because controlling each student’s smartphone/computer is extremely hard. Lastly, due to the fact that students travel in a virtual world, they can easily lose focus in the real world. It also lessens their time spent with real social interaction with one