Internet for English Teaching - Learning Goals

In this section of the chapter, the authors discuss five learning goals of English language courses. They are: Active and Creative Mastery, Autonomous Learning, Collaborative Learning, Cross-Cultural Learning and Critical Learning.

The authors suggest that teachers should help their students achieve active and creative mastery of new technologies, otherwise they are shortchanging their students. However, I wonder whether it's the responsibility of the English language teachers or the IT teachers to help students achieve mastery of new technologies.

I agree that mastery is not a onetime goal but an ongoing, liftlong process. Teachers should teach students "learn to learn". So that the students will become active learners not ducks that are waiting for feeders. But the authors did not mention how we can develop the autonomous learning strategies of students.

Collaboration becomes more and more important. Teachers are asked to teach collaboratively, students are asked to learn collaboratively. The authors claim that students cannot really learn to use the Internet well unless they learn collaborative communication and teamwork skills. It's not arguable that students can learn better if they can cooperative with other learners. However, learning from the Internet can be an individual , one-way work. The conclusion of the authors are too hasty.

The popularization of computers and the Internet decreases the distance between people from different corners of the world. It takes only a few minutes or even seconds for people to communicate over the Internet. People from different cultures can contact each other in an convenient way, thus cross-cultural learning is applicable.

Finally, the authors suggest that teachers should help students think critically by analyzing the perspectives and biases of individual www sites. This is extremely important. Students get access to the Internet at a very young age, as young as three years old. However, they seldom analyze the content of the webpages. They always believe what they read from the Internet. When they're asked to seach information from the web, they simply copy everything they see on the screen. Teachers should teach students to think critically when they first teach students to use the Internet. This is what we lack in the current curriculum.