| CODE | LHN5005 | ||||||||
| TITLE | ELT 5 Use of Digital Technologies and Other Issues in ELT | ||||||||
| UM LEVEL | 05 - Postgraduate Modular Diploma or Degree Course | ||||||||
| MQF LEVEL | 7 | ||||||||
| ECTS CREDITS | 5 | ||||||||
| DEPARTMENT | Languages and Humanities Education | ||||||||
| DESCRIPTION | This study-unit invites intending teachers of English to reflect upon and develop their knowledge and practice of current issues in English language teaching and learning. Various perspectives on current challenges in many of the areas of ELT are offered depending on the context in which teachers conduct their work. Different realities are illustrated to enable the implementation and improvement of English language teaching. Some of the topics of the study-unit are the use of digital and new technologies, language education policy planning, multilingual education, teacher agency, language mediation, how graphic novels can help to get young people into reading. mobile Pedagogy for ELT, using Podcasts in ELT, virtual Reality (VR) and artificial Intelligence (AI) for language teachers and learners, teaching Autistic Children with Robots, etc and relevant research. There is pervasive use of digital technologies in our daily lives and reading on screen has become a widespread practice. Digital technologies can be used for language and literacy teaching in the secondary classroom. The Internet has created spaces for second-language learning that are fundamentally different from spaces available fifteen years ago. These new, Internet-enabled spaces allow for bilingual participation in complex shared social activities. Young people all over the world watch, listen, read and learn from content produced in languages different than their own almost every day. This study-unit will adopt a developmental perspective. What happens in the early and primary years has a huge impact on human development and education in later years. Beginning readers in the early 21st century have unprecedented access to digital books and reading materials that provide them, and the adults supporting them, with many opportunities as well as many challenges. In the present chapter, we consider children’s early literacy experiences in a digital world. We review research on the influence of digital texts on early reading and explore how digital technologies are being integrated into educational literacy practices, both in the preschool and school age years. The success of this integration necessitates attention to multiple parts of the educational ecosystem, from individual learners to educators, and through to local and national educational policy. Growing numbers of children use a variety of media devices and applications at home (Jones & Park, 2015), and at an increasingly younger age. Parents report that their children are using digital technologies even at the age of one (Mifsud & Petrova, 2017). Mobile devices have become especially popular among children aged 0 to 8, with a large number of families with young children having smartphones and tablets in the home, although this has not automatically led to an increase in digital media use (Common Sense Inc., 2017), and does not tell anything about the range of factors influencing how the technologies are appropriated in the family setting (Plowman, Stevenson, Stephen, & McPake, 2012). Research suggests that a majority of today’s students play videogames on a regular basis – five or more times per week. Research also suggests that more attention is needed to understand and theorize the connections among multiple out-of-school literacy practices and academic spaces. There are multiple ways that videogames shape and inform people’s lifeworlds, and this unit aims to provide an understanding of gaming ecologies as a means to conceptualize and theorize gaming, learning, and virtual environments. Study-Unit Aims: This study-unit seeks to familiarise students with a number of current and relevant issues in ELT in Maltese secondary schools. The students will have extended opportunities to reflect on and discuss such issues, making direct links with their own classroom experiences. Learning Outcomes: 1. Knowledge & Understanding: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Consider and critically review a number of relevant issues in English Language Teaching in Maltese secondary schools. - Read and discuss the relevance of related research and its implications for ELT and second/foreign language acquisition and learning. 2. Skills: By the end of the study-unit the student will be able to: - Apply their understanding of a number of issues related to ELT in Maltese secondary schools to a number of teaching and learning situations in different school contexts. - Reflect on their professional practice in schools and seek methods, approaches and strategies which increase levels of motivation in the ELT classroom. - Assume responsibility for their own CPD (Continuing Professional Development). Main Text/s and any supplementary readings: - Readings will be recommended by the lecturer and may be accessed on the VLE. |
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| ADDITIONAL NOTES | Pre-requisite Qualifications: First cycle degree and 70 ECTS in English, of which 25 ECTS must be in Language and Linguistics, and 25 ECTS in Literature. | ||||||||
| STUDY-UNIT TYPE | Lecture | ||||||||
| METHOD OF ASSESSMENT |
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| LECTURER/S | Charles L. Mifsud |
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The University makes every effort to ensure that the published Courses Plans, Programmes of Study and Study-Unit information are complete and up-to-date at the time of publication. The University reserves the right to make changes in case errors are detected after publication.
The availability of optional units may be subject to timetabling constraints. Units not attracting a sufficient number of registrations may be withdrawn without notice. It should be noted that all the information in the description above applies to study-units available during the academic year 2023/4. It may be subject to change in subsequent years. |
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