Having paid attention to this approach I tried to integrate and design the computer activities in which the students' overall knowledge of language would be extended. Therefore, I tried to design such activities that would actively engage students in exploration, experimentation, collaboration and reflection of their own work.
At the time of the model testing I had been teaching at elementary school in Jablonec nad Nisou, 30 Arbesova street. I had had three years experience in teaching English as a foreign language and Informatics to elementary school students at the same school. To test the model I chose a group of students who I had been teaching English for 18 months 4 lessons a week and the ICT for 8 moths one lesson every week. This teaching experience provided me with detailed information about every individual student in the classroom, such as: the students’ language experience, their language learning environment and their attitude to the language learning. This knowledge also helped me to predict possible problems that could have appeared during the practical implementation of the model. The following paragraphs discus the students, their English language and computer literacy and the language learning materials and environment in which the model was tested.
Description of Trained students
The practical implementation of the model was tested with 13-year-old students of the 7th form. The group usually consisted of 13-16 students who were of mixed abilities. The students had been learning English for 3 years and 7 months and since then they had been working with the following textbooks: Chatterbox 1 and Chatterbox 2 textbooks by Derek Strange. At the time of the computer model implementation they had been working with Open Doors 1 by Whitney Norman for almost a year and a half.
Therefore, according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages they had reached the level of higher A1. They understood the spoken language concerning someone else and his environment. They could read and understand simple texts. They could express their immediate needs, present their personal details and information connected with their environment they lived in. They
were able to interact in simple conversation requiring the routine tasks and immediate information exchange. Their English language competence also included the following structures in all their forms (affirmative, negative statements and questions): present simple tense, present continuous tense, and structures expressing near future or future arrangements such as present continuous tens and be going to. The students should have been able to use other grammatical structures: pronouns and prepositions.
Before I started developing the materials and organizing them within the electronic lessons I had to consider other aspects of the students' language learning, such as learning habits and routines. Therefore, I decided to observe the students behavior and the way they approach different language tasks during my standard classrooms. I was interested in the relation between the type of exercises and the instructions, provided examples and context in which the activities were introduced.
This experience has shown that the students do not pay attention to instructions and sample items that are provided in written form within the printed activities except those instructions which are provided by the teacher, written on the board or demonstrated in front of the whole class. The students approached the activities with a routine so that they concentrated more on the type of exercise and graphical layout rather then on the provided instructions. This usually worked with activities and structures they had already experienced however when the focus and activity or task setting changed the students got immediately lost.
Consequently, I designed my lesson plans with respect to these routines. This means that the tasks setting could not be delivered only through computer. Therefore, I decided to set the complicated myself. I also integrated and developed activities which structure and layout should help the students to understand the tasks setting, so that, the setting could be delivered only in the electronic form.
The computer classroom settings and its effects on the planned lessons
The testing of the model took place in the standard computer laboratory. There were fifteen computers for the students and one for the teacher. The computers were placed on immovable desks around the walls of the laboratory. There was also a mobile white-board available. All computers were connected to the Internet. They all provided the same software equipment. The students could access the Internet with Mozilla
Firefox Internet browser with Micromedia Flash Player and Sun Java plug-ins. Each computer also had installed the OpenOffice.org text, graphics and presentation editors to open and process suggested types of documents. Moreover, the teacher's computer is equipped with projector that can screen the teacher's desktop on the projecting screen.
This classroom setting was reflected in the lesson plans. As there were not enough computers for each student to work individually, I had to consider the grouping of the students in case no students would be absent from school. The presence of Firefox plug-ins allowed me to plan activities in which the students played and listened to the sound tracks and include the exercises which were developed in Java programming language.
Textbook analysis and the computer language lessons objectives
The electronic lessons were designed with respect to overall curricular structure of the course based on the textbook contents. Therefore, the language teaching objectives of the tested model resulted from careful analysis of the textbook. This analysis identified the issues within the current textbook units which did not offer enough language teaching resources or which seemed to be poorly motivating for students.
The materials and suggested computer language learning technologies
Having stated the language teaching objectives for electronic lessons I started to look for the available teaching resources and computer technologies to fulfill them. The core of the lesson plan resulted from the objectives and the available on-line resources completed with activities self-developed in the LMS system. Before the on-line materials were integrated into the course I had to evaluate them. I focused on the information correctness and appropriateness for the language students and graphical layout and instructions. The activities that were not available in the Internet were tailored to precisely meet the objectives stated that were stated for particular lesson or stage of the lesson.
Hence, different technologies were suggested and tested:
• Ready-to-use web-based grammar exercises located in the Internet. These are gap filling or matching exercises integrated into the Language Management System.
• Teacher-developed learning objects designed within the Learning Management System. These learning objects can be implemented as tests or as lectures leading step by step the learners through their content. They which the activities are introduce. They also serve to clearly demonstrate the context in which the particular grammatical structures are used. They can be integrated as flashcards for vocabulary development.
• Audio These are sound tracks used for training listening skills and pronunciation. As well as images the audio can be used to set the language learning context.
• Communication means which are programs such as chat or forum. They are used for development of communicative language skills such as reading and listening. They can be used to support the students’ collaboration.
• Internet resources which are the websites used as a source of information that students use for completion of language tasks.
In selecting these technologies, I believed that I would:
1. motivate students by engaging them in variety of interesting computer language learning tasks
2. offer the students an opportunity to use English in its real-life context
Implementing these materials in the Professional Project I also attempted to support the idea that computers can be successfully integrated at any stage of language learning and teaching process. Hence, they should be capable of presenting grammar and vocabulary and serves as a material resource and tool for practicing language including controlled, semi-controlled and free practice.
I also aimed to show, that computers are capable of training reading, listening and writing language skills.
Evaluation tools
The results of the model were planned to be evaluated in two ways:
1 The reflection on the taught lessons.
These reflections are based on the observations of the computer managed language classes. They intend to report on the classroom procedure, the teacher’s and students’ behavior. Moreover, they should show whether the language teaching and computer use objectives stated for the particular lessons were achieved and how. They should also identify the problems that appeared.
2 Discussion with Students
The discussion with the students takes place during the English lesson that follows after the completion of model testing. The discussion intends to show the students’ personal opinion on the computer language learning experience.