Opening the Classroom Door


Opening the Classroom Door

by Elaine Kendrick

 It is very important that students get as much practice as possible communicating in English. Some of this will take place in the classroom, hopefully for about 80% of the time spent in class. Those minutes of class time are precious and few, so helping our students acquire English as a second language requires opening the door of the classroom and helping our learners recognize their opportunities to practice English in the outside world.

Many opportunities to practice can be found on the Internet. CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) has been around since the 1960s when the focus of language instruction was on learning, not acquisition. Our technological resources have improved quite a bit since then, and thanks to the Internet and the widespread use of mobile devices, authentic contexts for practicing English that lead to the acquisition are literally at their fingertips.

Because English is the dominant language of the Internet, many of our learners with online access are already engaging in subconscious language acquisition, which studies have shown to be more powerful than conscious learning (Jarvis & Krashen, 2014). Jarvis and Krashen (2014) recently conducted studies on native Thai and Arabic-speaking undergraduate students learning English and asked them how much English they use on the Internet. They found that these learners use a great deal of English for interacting socially on the internet and looking for information for both academic and personal use. Sixty-seven percent of the students used at least some English for messaging, 87% used English for Facebook and Instagram, 92% used English while watching YouTube videos, and 96% of the students used English for online gaming.

These examples highlight the most common ways learners are listening, speaking, reading, and writing in English while online. Communicating authentically in English need only be a mouse-click away!

Jarvis, H., & Krashen, S. (2014). Is CALL Obsolete? Language Acquisition and Language Learning Revisited in a Digital Age. TESL-EJ, Retrieved from http://www.tesl-ej.org/wordpress/issues/volume17/ej68/ej68a1/


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