International Journal of Educational Science and Research (IJESR) ISSN(P): 2249-6947; ISSN(E): 2249-8052 Vol.

4, Issue 1, Feb 2014, 47-52 TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

INTERNET- A MULTIFACETED TEACHER

BH.V. N. LAKSHMI1 & P. SREEHARI RAJU2
1 2

Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India

Assistant Professor of English, Shri Vishnu Engineering, College for Women, Bhimavaram, Andhra Pradesh, India

ABSTRACT
The present paper focuses on the technology-based learning of English language with particular reference to internet resources and how they help enthusiastic language learners enhance their language skills from the very basics to an advanced level with some aid of a language teacher in the initial stages. The paper informs of the journey of a language teacher who fervently keeps on trying to provide wholesome information in the process of making an amateur language learner into a perfect one. This is an outcome of the two teachers expertise with relevance to the understanding of difficulties that language learners face in becoming successful speakers and the effective utilization of technology in this regard.

KEYWORDS: English Language, Internet, Teaching INTRODUCTION

Knowledge acquisition is one of the key issues of mankind from the time immemorial. In India, Gurukula patashalalu such as Shantiniketan established by the most renowned writer of India, Rabindranth Tagore provided better education than most other institutions of his times keeping in mind the all round development of a student. Teacher-student relationship was given utmost importance in the remote past, where students directly learnt from their teachers without any sort of interference in between. It is true that things go on changing and no doubt, even the present teaching-learning process has been evolved into a predominant one with the advent of technology. Evidently, technology and teaching go hand in hand in the modern times. Internet, the father of all learning, requires an idiomatic eye in getting the right information to suit their needs.

ENGINEERING EDUCATION
In a world of growing internationalization and globalization of markets, engineering education should not only consist of providing the essential technical skills but also the educations focus needs to take into account international working environments and project works, vast information networks across many different cultures to prepare the student engineer for the demands of the industry. At the same time one cannot ignore the students educational, economic and intellectual back ground. Students might be from rural, semi-urban and urban or metropolis. All these indicate the complexity of target needs and variance of their English communication levels. Also, these needs go hand in hand with learners attitude, motivation, awareness, personality, expectations and learning styles. This is invariably a crucial junctu re where the teacher or trainer needs to concentrate.

ENGLISH LANGUAGE
Language teaching should not be imperialistic. Imposition of British and American texts in the name of standard language for Asian students is causing cultural discord as they cannot accept/understand its cultural context, semantics and diction as they are not familiar with the cultural nuances of those countries. Effectively utilizing the present technological

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resources an English instructor needs to trace out an effective teaching methodology so that the student can be able to convert his/her immediate surroundings into target language. In this context technology became a boon in providing a scope for developing effective activities targeting English language proficiency and better employability prospects of the students. The internet enfranchises people who are not native speakers to use English in significant and meaningful ways," said Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington DC.

READING: FOR BOTH WRITING AND SPEAKING

Reading is a very important aspect for spoken and written communication. It is essential to any student to take the words of Henry David Thoreau as a caveat A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must soon lay it down, and commence living on its hint. What I began by reading, I must finish b y acting. Neil Gaiman lecturing about reading said, words are more important than they ever were: we navigate the world with words, and as the world slips onto the web, we need to follow, to communicate and to comprehend what we are reading. Endorsing t he value of reading, online libraries and e-books are just at a click distance to the students today. Problem Identified and Solution Found Unlike the students in metropolis, students from the rural areas have less communication abilities though their schooling is in English Medium. Social and economic environment limiting communication to local language was one of the main reasons for getting deprived. Since they could read and write Basic English comfortably, they were under the impression that their English was reasonably good. In one way their academic targets made them myopic of their communicative aspect. Their English was not natural and not flawless. Jyoti Sanyal in the foreword of his book Indlish, aptly stated that short sentences, vigorous expression and a point of view are the three essentials of a good writer. Elucidating the essence of writing skills he said, During World War II when Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, was grappling with the bombing of London, he found time to write a memo to the civil service headed Brevity. He asked his colleagues and their staff to write their reports shorter. Churchill may have been wrong about Indian independence, but he was surely correct about writing. To him, clarity and brevity were part of a life-and-death struggle for freedom. A students word power can be more effective only with writing skills. For that one need not be a great litterateur, one should love life and be sensitive to language. Internet Resources Identifying the need of life skills, first year B. Tech students with high academic grades were taken selectively for improving their communicative abilities on experimental basis. Since our aim was to improve their spoken English as a first step, students were asked to read the latest e-novels which have conversational style. Some of the e-books are made available in multimedia English language lab. Students were directed to read them aloud for at least one hour a day at their convenience. Welcoming optimal utility of technology, some classic English movies were downloaded and students were encouraged to watch and discuss in groups. Some movies were provided in DVDs along with Mind your Language series. This made teaching-learning process stress free and it was like edutainment. Besides, students were regularly shown the videos from BBC Pronunciation Tips on how to pronounce and read continuous passages. Even www.talkenglish.com was used to help improve their oral communication through audio files on pronunciation supported by the transcript. One of the most resourceful websites www.TED.com was also used in improving their reading which finally lead to their oral talk. Specially, this web site has video talks from diversified fields and is supported by transcripts for all the talks. The students were advised to read these scripts after listening to the talks.

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Improvement in reading ability was conspicuous and gradually students enhanced their reading. They were able to share critical appreciation of what they read and viewed. The internet resources proved to be very effective in the process of developing oral communication. Writing Reading helps one write better. It is always good to select a particular writer and start reading one of his short stories or novels. The student has to continue with the same writer for a period of time to get better results. The reader must read one novel after the other or the same novel or short story for two or three times. After reading a few times, he/she must practice writing small paragraphs on various themes present in the book. At this point of time, the student should take the help of the teacher to put his/her ideas properly. This is the very first stage which requires a lot of practice and mistakes must be rectified. Slowly over a period of two or three months, he/she acquires the knack of writing correctly. While writing, the reader will also adopt the style of the writer unconsciously. Therefore, the idea of confining only to one writer is that reader can learn the style of that writer and later comes up with his/her own style. At Shri Vishnu Engineering College for Women, some of the students who were very serious about their career were taught the skills of writing through the method that was discussed here. Only five batches were taken for this purpose and each batch had only ten students for perfect practice of written communication. After two months of practice, these students acquired reasonably good writing skills under the careful observation of the teachers. The instructors encouraged to write small skits with some moral theme. After the instructor approved the script, students as a team filmed it in the TV academy established in the campus. Later the film was screened in the class and feedback was given on all aspects of their communication. This not only fine tuned their writing skills but also groomed their nonverbal communication. They developed sociability and became more confident. Also, some of the students created their own blogs on internet and started posting their experiences. This became a good exercise for them and the comments they received helped them improve their thinking. Listening In India, majority of students from rural areas have little opportunity to practice listening in English. Even watching English channels on TV is uncommon, for watching TV is a family activity not an individual one and family preference is always the channels in mother tongue. Consequently students focus shifted to internet and as Jane O'Brien said, Online, English has become a common language for users from around the world. In the process, the language itself is changing. This is the stage where students must be harnessed in their listening skills. Since, they do not pay attention to listening; they invariably start speaking English with less fluency. Often they do not focus on contractions such as wont cant and shant and instead they are influenced by local speakers of English and try to emulate them. For example, they speak: I do not go there instead of I dont go there. She will not help you. instead of She wont help you. I cannot do it right now. Instead of I cant do it right now. The students are also very much influenced by their mother tongue and speak without appropriate accent and intonation and obviously their speaking ends in telgish. This is because they do not have enough listening practice in

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natural and conversational English. Listening is a receptive skill that impacts speaking skill. Intensive and extensive listening of carefully selected material gives desired results after due practice. In this regard it is better to listen to British English speakers who will use received pronunciation which is more acceptable. Other adva ntage is a plenty of material has been developed and uploaded on the net by BBC, British Council, Longman, Oxford and Cambridge universities. However, careful selection of material for listening practice under the guidance of a teacher is highly prescribed for proficiency in speaking. Practicing either listening or speaking is not free from hurdles since the impact of mother tongue on target language is unavoidable. Students are more habituated to process the information in their mother tongue while understanding what they read and listen. Later they translate it into target language while speaking and writing. This naturally makes communication frivolous. Addressing this problem, the instructors encouraged the students to think in English and then express orally or in writing. As a first step, the students who had shown a lot of enthusiasm were taken for listening practice. Fifty students were selected and were asked to listen to BBC 6 Minute English, taking one pod cast each time they practice listening 3 to 4 times. Initially, they were allowed to look at the pod cast and listen to the audio at least two times. Next they were asked to listen to the audio without looking at the pod cast. Finally, they were allowed to study only the transcript concentrating different expressions used in the conversation and make a note of them for quick learning. Every day they were allowed to listen to two audio pod casts sincerely. Since these pod casts deal with a variety of topics, the student had enough practice in a variety of situations. After 10 days of practice in this manner, they were asked to go back and listen all the previous pod casts one time. It was firmly believed that this practice of listening would help them speaking English naturally. Other websites such as British Council pod casts and www.talkenglish.com are used for practicing initially. British Council's 'Listen and Watch' was used as an additional material for more practice. Especially, elementary podcasts, 'talk about' and 'how to talk' were used extensively for the purpose of listening. The students practiced all the material for one month. By that time they learnt that they had good stock of ideas in their minds. Thus, this extensive listening practice provided them enough foundation in the process of improving their speaking skills. Speaking Taking hectic academic schedules and time constraints into account students were encouraged to rely more on internet even for watching some important shows. Programs in National Geography, History and Discovery channels cover all science, history and geography. Special shows in NDTV such as We the People, Big Fight, The Buck stops here etc. are available in archives in NDTV website. Students were monitored to watch these programs at their leisure and critical discussions were made among peer groups. Internet also provided unique facility of enjoying listening to not only great speeches, debates etc. but also classic works in a voice of ones choice. Students wer e encouraged to speak about eminent people, organize group discussions and interview local experts of different fields in the Radio Vishnu, a community radio station established in the campus. This facility gave them cooperative learning environment and a real time experience of formal speaking. Vocabulary Word is the skin of thought. As we miserably fail to tailor made our vocabulary for our thought, we are starving the thought to fit into our needs. Thus, the inner expression remains unexpressed and orphaned. A language teacher should

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help the student fill the gap between thought and word. If any English word is to be learnt, it has to be fixed or given a particular identification. This determination of identity is nothing but collocation. A word can be easily remembered if one can understand the usage of the word with same meaning in different contexts or with specific meaning in a particular context. Students were instructed to go through Longman Communication 3000 with special focus on th eir meanings, usage and collocations for better communication. Various activities were designed based on that. All the systems in the English language lab are provided with Websters dictionary and Oxford Learners dictionary.

CONCLUSIONS
It is the firm belief of the teachers that a language can be acquired when right ambiance is created. Practice will be an addition to it. Keeping this in view now the technical institutions across the nation became venues for online knowledge sharing. It is true that with continuous practice alongside minimum support from a teacher and greater dependence on the internet can bring in desired results. This process escalated LSRW skills in all the selected students in this program and their communication ability evidently endorsed the effective utility of internet resources. Thus, by providing encyclopedic assistance and connecting people globally through the power of communication, internet, today is not just a tool or facility but truly a multifaceted teacher in the technology driven world.

REFERENCES
1. British Council: Learn English. https://www.google.co.in/?gws_rd=cr&ei=Bix2UsTFDoSMrQfvv4CABQ#q=Learn%20Eng lish%20from%20British%20Council 2. Gaiman, Neil. Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming. Viewed on 15 Oct. 2013. Retrieved daydreaming. 3. Jane OBrien. Learn English Online: How the internet is changing language. Viewed on 9 Oct. 2013. Retrieved from http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20332763 4. Learning English-Home- BBC. https://www.google.co.in/?gws_rd=cr&ei=Bix2UsTFDoSMrQfvv4CABQ#q=BBC%20lear n%20English. 5. Longman Communication 3000. https://www.google.co.in/?gws_rd=cr&ei=Bix2UsTFDoSMrQfvv4CABQ#q=Longman%20C ommunication%203000 6. 7. 8. Sanyal, Jyoti. Indlish. Viva Books Private Limited. New Delhi 2006. www.talkenglish.com http://www.ted.com/ from http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-