Using Computers in the ESOL Classroom

From LiteracyTentWiki

As we well know, students' motivation is an important factor in their educational success (or lack thereof). The ARCS model names four important elements to include when you plan your instruction:

• Catching and maintaining learners' attention throughout the activity

• Making sure the activity content has relevance to learners' goals

• Engendering learner confidence that they are capable of attaining the activity objectives

• Constructing the activity so that learners have opportunities to feel a sense of satisfaction through experiencing success or getting a reward as a result of their participation

For more information on ARCS, read Kevin Kruse's succinct article: The Magic of Learner Motivation: The ARCS Model [1]

Computers offer the possibility of including multimedia to appeal to different learning styles/intelligences such as movement (clicking, typing, dragging items), audio (sound files), and visuals (graphics, colors).

Since each ESOL student can find a different mode of processing English (movement, audio, or visuals) easiest, using the multimedia mentioned above is especially useful in aiding ESOL students because you can exploit their strongest modes of understanding and processing the language in the lesson.