TeachingEnglish
Has EFL evolved since 2000?
Submitted by fernandon on 15 March, 2010 - 15:10
It suddenly dawned on me the other day – I'm a bit slow on the uptake – that we are now ten years into the 21st century. I started thinking about how teaching (and learning) English as a foreign language has evolved during the last decade, and the truth is that I couldn't come up with a single thing! Have we been standing still? Or have we actually been going backwards? Or have I spent the last ten years in a time warp, blissfully ignorant of all the exciting developments going on around me? What do you think?
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Comments
I'd say the internet has changed us all in the last 10 years. When I began, I knew lots of people who didn't have an interent connection. That has to a large extent changed. I think the amount of material available on the web has made us all a lot more aware of what other people are teaching and what is possible. There are so many sites - the British Council's among the best of course - offering free material produced by outstandingly good teachers. I've found people to be very generous with their time on the internet with a wealth of ideas, topics, pictures, lesson plans etc which takes a lot of the stress and pressure out of the job. Ideas like NLP and task based learning have also gained ground and offered us all plenty of new strategies for making our lessons livelier, more interesting and fun for our students. I don't feel like I've been standing still all this time!
I totally agree with the above comment. The internet has changed our way of teaching and learning. This website is a good example of evolution. In 2000, you would not have so easily access to so much information about teaching or learning english nor you would be able to interact so easily with other people from other parts of the globe. A lot of people (teachers and students) tend to find their information online (through forums, blogs,etc) rather than calling people or looking for information in a book.