Using Computers Our college is now equipped with t

Good morning and welcome to this lecture. Today I’m going to talk about using computers in education. Our college, the College of English Studies, aims to provide a comprehensive range of courses for students of English as a Foreign Language. This range from beginners courses through English for Special Purposes to preparatory courses for students about to attend a British university. The college is now equipped with the most sophisticated teaching aids and a first-class computer centre. We have plans to use computers in language teaching and several things are going on at the moment.
   In the computer centre, there are main frame computers, a very big kind. They are already used by the administration for keeping records and making tests and this sort of thing. Now I’ll particularly talk about the use of the micro or mini-computers with the TV screen. And basically the first thing we’re trying to do is to put all kinds of reading comprehension texts and questions on the screens and the idea is that the student individually can select a test or a reading comprehension passage from a whole list, and call it up very quickly on the screen and look at it and do the answers in that particular way. Basically we’re using it as a sort of reading device at the moment.
   Let’s say for example, if a student wants to practise a particular grammatical point, he just chooses it and an exercise will come up. For example, a sentence with a part missing, and the student has to choose the correct missing part. If the student gets the answer right, then the screen immediately tells the student that, and will also tell the student why it’s right. If the student gets the answer wrong, the machine will explain why it’s wrong, and the student can then choose to have another try at the question or to go on to the next question. The first advantage is that students can choose the thing they want to practise or to learn. Secondly they can get immediate feedback, individual feedback, from the machine on whether they are making progress or not. And they can give up when they are tired or carry on if they’re not tired. They don’t have to depend on the rest of the class or the rest of the group.
   It’s very advantageous. But I think most forms of teaching and most forms of learning are not possible by computer. I think the computer provides a lot of information when you want it. But it doesn’t provide the essential feature in language learning, I think, and that is the practice of speaking to another human being or human beings. It’s just an extra device, that’s all. It’s not intended to replace teachers and I don’t think it will replace teachers.