The Evolution of Technology Usage in English Language Teaching

Long ago, before nowadays technology exists—in the primordial ages—, humans’ role was narrowed to survival since their populations were few and there was no diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and religion. Thus, every person's problems are pretty similar. As time went by, humans were multiplying and automatically their problems started to be various. They would get sick, they would run out of things to trade, they would catch a cold during winter, they would find it difficult to speak to each other, etc. Consequently, they were evolving, by discovering what’s within this world and adapting the way they lived. Evolution by evolution, until now, humans have found out heaps of things, including education. Alike the other aspects, education—its objectives and aims, learning method, curriculum, textbooks, system, tools, etc.—is also evolving. The previous century would never be able to comprehend the use of technology in learning and teaching. They have no idea what online classrooms, Moodle, Google Classroom, and Memrise are.

Before talking about how education evolves, we should know what makes it evolves, the technology. As mentioned in the first paragraph, there are always new problems found in every era. Back then, people did not rely on technology and machine as it is now. Thus, their scope of knowledge and skills was narrow. As long as they had skills such as; creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication, leadership, responsibility, accountability, etc., they were good enough. But the 21st century is built different. We are required to be mastering skills such as; media literacy, information literacy, Information Communication Technology literacy, computing, etc. If not, we will be drowning in danger and get outdated. You may start asking questions like, “What kind of danger if we are technology illiterate?”, “What is the matter if we get outdated?” Well, do you know what this era/society is called? It is an information era, where we can give and get innumerable information around the world. It sounds interesting and futuristic, isn’t it? I just mentioned the required skills for the information society, let’s say digital literacy. Digital literacy is the ability to use digital technology, communications tools, and/or networks to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information to function in a knowledge society. Digital literacy skills consist of critical thinking and evaluation, collaboration, creativity, communication and netiquette, finding and selecting information, digital culture, online safety skills, and functional skills. Then, what is the relationship between having digital literacy in an information society? Now imagine, if we get bombarded with tons of information every day, will you be able to focus on your things? Anyway, that information is not 100% accurate. You will discover a lot of misleading and hoax news. How do you sort out kind of news? That is why you need to be digitally literate. With digital literacy skills, you will know what information you literally need the most, and you will also understand how to identify whether this news is legitimate or not.

Back to the main topic—the evolution of technology usage in English language teaching. The emergence of technology changes the way education works. For instance, during the 3 years of the covid-19 pandemic, every face-to-face activity in school was restricted to prevent virus transmission. Indeed, the learning system and mechanism were adapted too. Teachers' and students’ classroom activities were held online, exams were done online, report cards were given online, etc. All those solutions are thanks to ICT. ICT (Information, Communication, and Technology) in education, especially ELT (English Language Teaching), is the activity of using technologies, such as; computers, the internet, and other telecommunications media (radio, TV, smartphones) to communicate, create and disseminate, store and manage information in English language teaching and learning. There are 9 approaches to utilizing ICT in ELT; CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning, RALL (Robot Assisted Language Learning), TELL (Technology Enhanced Language Learning, Blended Learning (The combination of face-to-face and online learning), Flipped Learning (Students autonomous online learning before face-to-face classroom meeting), LMS (Learning Management System, Online classroom learning platform), TPACK (Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge), SAMR (Substitution, Augmentation, Modification, Redefinition). The use of ICT  applications in English language teaching such as Google Classroom, Moodle, Schoology, Edmodo, Canvas Instructure, and Quipper was immensely increasing. Not only ICT applications, but teachers also utilized some electronic tools such as laptops, smartphones, LCD Projectors, and interactive whiteboards to teach.

ICT’s role in teaching changes the learning pace. Teachers are no longer present in front of students, instead, they explain the material in front of their devices. Teachers are also provided a lot of resource materials from the internet. Assignments and projects are done online, and so do the practice and assessment. However, despite bringing advantages—ICT provides more teaching-learning material resources for teachers and students, ICT increases students critical and creative thinking and accommodates collaborative learning, ICT promotes autonomous learning, ICT improves students' and teachers' digital literacy skills, increases positive attitude to technology application, ICT enhances students motivation in learning, ICT gives easiness and flexibility for long-distance learning (remote teaching), ICT creates paperless/eco-friendly teaching and learning environment—and novelty in education, ICT also brings in some inevitable disadvantages; Teachers’ knowledge and attitude are low toward ICT in teaching. Teachers will find it difficult to maintain students' motivation in autonomous learning, policy and institutions for ICT are insufficient, lacks facility and technological support to implement ICT, health issue, and high cost and maintenance.