Free Essay. Technology and Second Language Teaching and Learning

Although technology has taken over society, and the way things are run in it, there are still hindrances when it comes to incorporating technology into the impartation of education. The field of Computer Assisted Learning, otherwise known as CAL, has been popular in learning other languages and has evolved at an alarming rate, changing how people learn languages. CAL and other similar applications have been formulated to help teach and learn languages (Cetto, 2010). However, the effects of technology in learning should not be assessed from an aspect of access, but also in terms of the availability of the software to the availability of a system of integration whereby the learning can be integrated with the person's training to bring out the best outcomes from the learning experiences. Therefore, the use of technology in learning second languages should not be used to phase out the importance of instructors, but rather to increase their teaching techniques' productivity and effectiveness.

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Learners can access the use of technology in their learning of second languages through either education through technological devices or learning with the technological tools provided by their institutions. The former implies that learning will occur passively from the learner, while the latter means that the learning will occur actively to the learner and that they will participate in the learning process. Therefore, the use of learning from technology acknowledges the technological devices used as tutors to the learners. They use various methods of delivery of information to give out their lessons as programmed by the person initiating the learning through them (Chapelle, 2004). On the other hand, when one learns with technology, the technological devices used are considered to be contributing to the knowledge base provided in the technology device. Therefore they are also participating in the learning process of others. Thus, the equipment used in passing the information regarding the languages learned is considered to be tools which help the learners to achieve the required thinking capacity and processes, skills in research, and other skills that they may need to grasp the knowledge being passed to them quicker and to help them become fluent readers, writers, and speakers of the second language that they would like to learn.

The use of CAL in teaching and learning of second languages has been tipped to be more effective when the environments of learning are made to be more interactive, thus ensuring that the learners get to experience the environments similar to those under which the language they are learning is used, as well as providing the learner an opportunity to interact with other learners who will exchange ideas on how to learn the language better, faster and more effectively (Thouësny & Bradley, 2011)Therefore since language is an interactive and social phenomenon, it has been thought efficient to teach the languages from a common point or at the same time while providing the learners with the opportunity to interact with each other so that they can motivate each other and form alliances that would help them learn faster.

The Use of Informal and Self-training in Learning Second Languages

The personal learning environment means the environments created by individuals to teach themselves the second language they wish to learn. This is important since the personal learning environments offer the learners with the training that they may have received in actual classrooms, at the convenience of the learners since they can use their free time to learn the new languages, as well as learning at their own pace and comfort since they will be able to retake the lessons for as long as they would like until when they grasp the information being passed to them (Salaberry, 2001). Additionally, the use of technology in learning the second language of one's choice is vital in helping people to save on money, since online resources are found cheaper, with most of the platforms like YouTube providing learners with the necessary material for free. Therefore, the emergence of video-streaming platforms has helped learners to be able to interact with other people seeking the same services, that is, the free online classes on the languages that they would like to learn, and therefore they may point each other in the direction where they may access the required information for further mastery of the languages that they would like to learn.

The emergence and spread of the internet played a significant role in learning new languages since people would only require access to the internet and the website from which they would be learning, and they would be able to learn as many languages as possible they would wish to. Apart from the use of video-streaming platforms to increase the interest of learners to new languages, as well as raising the possibility of increasing the mastery of the ones that one already knows has also been strengthened by the emergence of auto-translating platforms and services such as Google translate platform, which offers the users an opportunity to translate documents or texts into any language that they would wish to (Warschauer & Meskill, 2000). Through online translating services, which are mostly free, one can improve their reading and writing skills of foreign languages, making learning more accessible through the learning being based on the learner's first language. When this happens, the learner can learn faster, since the second language will be taught from the point of understanding to a point where the unknown facts are made known. Therefore, it can be concluded that the internet has made learning of second languages easier, cheaper, and more productive.

The Use of Social Media Platforms as Learning Tools for Second Languages

The use of the internet has increased the possibility of people from different parts of the world to connect and interact for business or social reasons. This way, people have gotten to learn new languages in the process. The use of social media in learning new languages has been strengthened by the availability of translation services, as well as the availability of interpreters who speak the language. Learning is free and facilitated by the Internet. It is also useful for learning since the use of social media offers interactive learning, with the learners having to use the little knowledge that they will have gathered on the languages in question and when they speak or write them to the people who are experts in the language they can get instant feedback, with corrections or commendations for their mastery of the language that they are using. Therefore, through social media, the learner's role is moved from that of a consumer to a producer, in that they become co-builders and co-founders of the languages they seek to learn. This way, the learning of languages is spread from one location of the world to another, and therefore languages are being spread across the globe.

Performed Art and its Role in Learning of Second Languages

Performed arts such as movies, songs, and poetry have provided learners with other opportunities from which they can learn other languages. Catchy tunes sung in foreign languages have been used to learn new languages, especially when the learner gets to learn without their knowledge of the fact that they are learning the new languages. For example, when one hears a Spanish song, they may be able to get the lyrics first, thus learning the pronunciation of the words in the dialect, hence enabling them to be able to correctly pronounce the words in the second language of their choice before even learning their meanings, which is a more straightforward process than the learning of pronunciations which will already have been covered. It is also through movies that one gets to learn the pronunciation and the meaning of words, especially when the performances in foreign languages are captioned, thus enabling the learner to know how to pronounce and write in a foreign language.

Other Forms of CAL of Foreign Languages

There are other subparts of the CAL through which learners have been able to learn the languages of their choice through technological devices apart from their computers. For example, the use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) has been suggested in the learning of foreign languages, with the inclusion of interactive whiteboards over the internet, the use of e-portfolios to help people interested in learning foreign languages to interact and learn together, as well electronic dictionaries which help people to seek meanings and translations of foreign languages, with the option of learning how to pronounce the languages, as well as the opportunity to use the words they looked up in sentence contexts. Additionally, when one seeks to perfect their written second language, they will be able to access online grammar checkers, which will help them to see if they have grasped the use of the foreign languages correctly and in the right sentence contexts. Furthermore, for those seeking to perfect their spoken foreign languages, they can use the platforms of speech recognition, which will help them to recognize if they have mastered the use of the second language, in the context of what they have said and the meanings that they got from the speech recognition applications and software.

Additionally, there have been interests in establishing Robot-Assisted Learning platforms, especially in Asian countries, whereby robots have been used as a motivation to learn foreign languages by teaching the pre-programmed lessons they have been told to on command. The use of robots in teaching and learning foreign languages is practical and applicable, where there are no speakers of the language that one wants to learn. Therefore they use programmed robots to help in teaching the languages, written or spoken. However, the use of robot-assisted learning is limited since it does not meet the learners' individual needs but instead addresses the general requirements of the learners.

Characteristics of the Use of Technology in Teaching and Learning of Second Languages

First, the use of technology means that the learning and teaching of second languages are impersonal since it reduces the need of the learner and instructor to be in close proximity to the learning process (Diao, 2018). Therefore, it is essential to note that the reason why most people have undertaken the use of technology to learn foreign languages is due to the unavailability of the needed resource people to help them in learning the languages. The second characteristic of using technology in learning is the accessibility of the services regardless of the person's location in question. Therefore, the learner and instructor may be in different locations through technology, and learning would still occur—this is advantageous, especially when considering long distances separate the distance between the learners and instructors.

Additionally, the use of technology in learning second languages relies on different platforms to help achieve their expected outcomes. Therefore, while others opt for robots, computers, social media, or the performed arts, it is evident that the use of different platforms has been a key player in the spread of languages across the globe since people learn the languages from the platforms that they are the most comfortable with (Ahmadi & Reza, 2018). Furthermore, the use of technology in learning relies heavily on the internet to provide the lessons needed for the learner.