Promoting Writing and Computer Literacy Skills Through Student-Authored Web Pages
✍ Scribed by Jerry Bicknell
- Publisher
- Wiley (John Wiley & Sons)
- Year
- 1999
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 98 KB
- Volume
- 8
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 1056-7941
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
atima, a prospective international business major from Kuwait, points to the image displayed on her computer monitor. "The picture is too small," she says to her Thai and Brazilian classmates. They are examining a Web page displayed in a Netscape Web browser window. The page is part of an electronic magazine that they are producing for an ESL writing module. Discussing the composition and design of the electronic document, they begin manipulating the text, background colors, and size and positioning of the pictures they imported earlier. When they are satisfied with their results, the pages they have created will be uploaded to a server to present to other students of English all over the world via the World Wide Web (WWW). Does such a scene seem unlikely for your students? It may not be as farfetched as you think. If your school has Internet access, your students, too, can engage in a wide range of Web publication projects.
This article 1 describes one computerassisted language learning (CALL) project undertaken in an intensive English course at West Virginia University. The results of the project have applications for English language teaching across a wide range of contexts that include university-based ESL as well as K-12 classrooms, adult education and literacy classes, and, in fact, any EFL/ESL setting in which computers with Internet access can be found. What follows, then, is a rationale for using such a project and tips for teachers who want to try something similar in their own language classrooms.