Technology and ELT - David Crystal's Views on English Language Teaching

Hello Readers !

Language learning has become easy after the invention of mobile phones, email services, SMS services and internet service. When it comes to English language, technology has helped a lot in terms of language learning. The means of communication have now dramatically changed. Many educators, theorists and linguists have advocated the technology as a good tool for language learning. David Crystal is one of them. He has emphasized on English language learning through technology.

David Crystal

In this blog task, three videos of David Crystal are embedded and a brief writeup about the three videos are written. Lets know what he has said about language learning and teaching. Click here to be redirected on blog of Dr. Dilip Barad from which this task is taken as question.

Video 1. David Crystal - The Effect of New Technologies on English

The introduction of technology at first place is thought as a disaster and also thought as it can harm the human communication. Crystal gives the example of the invention of telephone, television and broadcasting media, commentaries on sports. . . And consistently he argues that all these mediums are much helpful in language learning, especially English language.

Internet, WWW came in 1990s and 1991. All this has increased our learning abilities and knowability. Facebook. Twitter, YouTube, Blogger and many such Web 2.0 tools have developed a new style of English language learning.

Crystal quotes here that : Notice that the technologies influence the language in quite specific ways. The most obvious example are Short Messaging Services (SMS), and tweeting.

Crystal generalizes the point by making an argument about Tweeter that is given 140 characters and we have to write something to the web, in public tweets. He says: Every internet domain you're dealing with influences the way in which you use language, sometimes in quite specific ways. But it isn't yet possible to predict the future.

Video 2. David Crystal - The Biggest Challenges for Teachers

This is the second part of Crystal's interview. In this video Crystal talks about the challenges for teachers. He says,

The biggest challenge is without a doubt to keep a pace with language change.

Language is changing so fast and it has two reasons, 1. The internet.

Teachers are less familiar with the current generation and the new words introduced on web almost daily, so its difficult to keep pace. 2. Globalization of English. Accents and dialects of English language is different from country to country. Indian English, American, British English and so on.

Listening to different English accents tunes the ears and makes us adaptive to that accent. According to Crystal, translation and language teaching are the two most difficult jobs in the world. He also gives good fact that three quarters of the world's population is bilingual.

Teachers' salary scale also should be increased. With the use of technology, this language and accent barrier can be removed.

Video 3. David Crystal on Texting (S1E2 of It's Only a Theory)

The third video is about a show titled "It's Only a Theory". It seems that the show is designed to interact with various theorists so that the difficult theories and complex ideas can be shared with people in simple and humorous ways. Panel of three questions some points of David Crystals and he answers satisfactorily.

Key Points from video : Texting can be helpful in English language learning. Crystal's theory is texting is good for the English language. Four myths about texting are debunked by Crystal that 1. Texting is done by kids only, 2. Kids fill their text messages entirely with abbreviations, 3. The abbreviation used in text messages are invented by kids, and abbreviation is a modern thing 4. Letters are being outdated, kids don't know how to spell. 5. Because they don't know how to spell, kids are putting those abbreviations in their essays at school.

Crystal says in the show that: Everybody would agree that literacy is important, learning to read and write. And everybody I think agrees that the best way of learning to read and write is to get practice in it. The more you read the more you write better. Along comes a phenomenon, a technology which gives you stunning opportunities to practice reading and writing.

On showing the example of abbreviated message on screen, Crystal admits that there are downsides of texting also. He agrees that texting can become an addiction and it has been recognized also.

When Andy, the host of the show raises the question that texting has made people less punctual in terms of following time schedule, Crystal also finds a gap here and he agrees that the question is worth noticing. But it doesn't affect the language learning part.

Thank You!