Challenges and opportunities for technology in foreign language classrooms

370 views · Published 5 June 2013 · 0:30 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) · 2013 · Science & Technology

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Full Title: 

Challenges and opportunities for technology in foreign language classrooms

Authors:

Katie Kuksenok, Michael Brooks, Qian Wang, Charlotte P. Lee

Abstract:

We present the results of a two-month ethnographic study of three introductory Russian classrooms. Through observation and interviews, we identify several distinct roles played by physical artifacts in the classrooms, such as providing a reference to necessary foreign-language material and serving as props in creative role-play. The range of roles taken on by artifacts and the attitudes students have toward them provide a basis for our discussion about how technology might be more effectively introduced into the socially negotiated environment of the introductory foreign-language classroom. We identify the need to balance between collaborative and personal technology in a stressful, but social, context. Our findings inform a range of roles that technology can undertake in replacing or augmenting existing classroom artifacts.

URL: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2466129

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/2470654.2466129

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