People are talking about DSL (Digital as a Second Language) nowadays and Gavin's talk was about the importance of being digitally fluent if you're a 21st century teacher. So important in fact, that Gavin has written a book about it, with co-authors Nicky Hockley and Mark Pegrum (Digital Literacies, Pearson, 2013) There are many different digital literacies relevant to language : (texting, print, gaming, mobile, multimedia, code); others with a focus on information (information, search, tagging); those that relate to connections (personal, participatory, network, and (inter)cultural) and remix. The last of these Gavin illustrated by showing a video of Tony Blair and George Bush's love song. In the current age, we need to take all of these into consideration because they are part of the skill set that people need and in some ways, as Gavin mentioned, educators are now preparing people for jobs that currently don't exist. Mobility is now one of the key factors
One of the most important things that you need to have behind the language learning is the interest to learn it. It is spot on that language learning is a most complex thing and everyone should offer their best to become master of a language. It is the interest that stands as a motivating factor for the people to learn a particular language. None of the people can learn a language because others forced them to learn a language. A person should have an interest to learn a language. Therefore, the role of interest behind the language learning is huge.
ReplyDelete