Greetings everyone! We hope you are well. In addition to telling you about our future courses we wanted to talk about C.A.L.L (Computer Assisted Language Learning)
Computer Assisted Language Learning in the Classroom
Teaching a language successfully requires consistency and variety. Consistency is achieved through regular weekly classes which progressively raise the proficiency of your students in the four principal skills of language acquisition: Speaking, Writing, Listening and Reading. Consistency requires careful and progressive integration of the core vocabulary you have chosen into your lessons. Still, having a water-tight curriculum will not ensure success unless a variety of methods are also used. A multi-branched approach to encoding the vocabulary and grammar of the target language into the minds of your students is essential to a successful language course. There are hundreds of programs and apps that promise big results. Basically, they all work great IF, the user has the self-discipline to stick with the program and regularly use the app or program selected. That said, very few claim to have learned a language only by using C.A.L.L. (I’ve never met one-yet) For this reason, language learners do better when they use these programs in conjunction with other systems.
Computer Assisted Language Learning or C.A.L.L is just one of the many methods we highlight in our seminar. By periodically incorporating segments of C.A.L.L. in your lessons you will keep your lessons fresh and maintain your student’s attention. This will require that you choose a program best suited to your curriculum. Don’t forget that having fun is a powerful memory aid to learning.
Allowing your students to play educational games like “Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego” or “Oregon Trail” will yield excellent results. As the students work together to get to the next level, they will be motivated to use the words they already collectively know and search for unknown vocabulary in an environment that does not make them feel insecure. Following up these short periods of C.A.L.L with a variety of other methods will rapidly encode the target language vocabulary into their long-term memory. Regular use of this method is a sure-fire way to keep your students progressing with the language, keep them focused and keep them happy with you as a teacher.
Keep your lessons consistent and add lots of variety in the methods you use.
Your students will thank-you!
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