Sessions

The Future of Teaching English with Technology

At a webinar last year, an audience member asked a question: “Will language teachers be replaced by technology?” I confidently answered with a big "No". Yet, the question lingers. Surviving almost one year teaching language online, today I am convinced that some language teachers will not be replaced by technology — but others will. In this talk, I will discuss how technology has been used and how it will continue shaping our job as language teachers. Reflecting on my own teaching experience and exploring the potentials of technology, I will also discuss how future language teachers can teach English with technology. To be able to successfully teach English with technology, we will need to stop seeing technology as a powerful tool that brings about definite results without considering how it is used. We need to go beyond finding out whether an app is effective for learning or teaching grammar, vocabulary, or pronunciation, for instance. We need to consider that technology is not merely an instrument we use to serve language teaching purposes. It has penetrated our lives so deeply in many different ways that its use has changed the way we teach and the way language learners learn. Francisca Maria Ivone currently teaches at the Department of English, Universitas Negeri Malang in Indonesia. She has a Bachelor of Education from IKIP Malang, Indonesia, and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy in Applied Linguistics from The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. She researches and publishes in the area of ELT, TELL, CALL, Extensive Listening and Viewing (EL/V), Extensive Reading (ER), learning autonomy, and collaborative learning. She is passionate about the use of technology in language teaching and learning. She also gives training to pre-service and in-service teachers on the use of technology in language teaching and learning, ER, and EL/V.