6. Can Technology Surpass Teachers?... by Vijay

Introduction

The soaring of software industry has changed style and movements of life. Being fast and peculiar is its invincible feature. Globalization is possible today thanks to the advent of science and technology. The field of Teaching is also enjoying the vibrations of technology that is a right rival for the teaching personnel since debates are on replacing classroom teaching to online instruction. Since the date of its arrival in the market, it has not replaced the teachers for various reasons like cost, efficiency, and practicability. The firms that manufacture technology themselves believe in manual training to their staff rather than training solely through technology.

Technology serves as a storehouse of contents that a learner can access from anywhere and at anytime. It is not possible in the case of teachers since they are confined to one place and one work. Whatever the information that a learner needs, technology acts faster than a teacher in bringing things visible to them. It acceptable fact that a memory chip stores more than a human brain. This has compelled the teachers to rely on technologies.

“Many see computer as a threat not only in terms of its power to replace the traditional skills, which the language teachers promote, but also the teacher himself.”(Yugandhar, 2010)

Teaching and Training

Teaching is transmission of knowledge between emotional and biological setup. Teachers have to stimulate students’ mind and influence them to observe his/her lessons by constructing a bond between their emotions. However, both emotions should be eager to encode and decode the communicated patterns in the learning atmosphere.

Training is a compliment of teaching where the trainer provides another platform for the learners to revise the contents learned already and begin with new advancements. The trainee uses the acquired knowledge and manipulates it for better application. Training will not fetch results if there was any inconsistency in the period of teaching and learning. Obviously, testing is done during the period of training. Dr.Rao (2010) in his web blog clearly differentiates teaching from training. He states that

• • Teaching provides new knowledge to the people while training helps the already knowledgeable people to learn the tools and techniques to apply the same.

  • Teaching fills mind while training shapes habits.

  • Training lays stress on skills and abilities with a shorter time span where as teaching on education, knowledge and wisdom with a longer time span.

  • Training provides depth of knowledge in a specific sphere while teaching provides breadth of knowledge in all spheres.

  • Training makes a Master of a trade while the teaching makes Jack-of-all-trades.

  • Teaching commands lot of respect where as the training is mostly treated from the commercial perspective.

  • Teaching provides information, knowledge, experience where as training facilitates learning.

These differences exemplify the functioning of the teacher and a trainer where teacher’s role is deep and wide when compared to a trainer. Technology functions as a trainer by justifying the purpose for which it was prepared. It never touches the area in addition to that its stipulated work. Inadequacies of prerequisite skills for career growth among the students make teachers go insufficient with their classroom methodologies. This reason compels them to go beyond the classroom lectures and rely on technology for enhancing the skills. As technology gives training in variety of areas like grammar, vocabulary, reading, listening, phonetics, puzzles, soft skills, etc it is accepted as a solid aid for training the things unaccomplished in the regular classroom classes.

Role of Technology

As said in the earlier paragraphs technology is blooming up as substantial aid in language teaching. Listening to all types of English with its respecting style, pronunciation, diction is remote possible in traditional classroom setup. Teachers cannot do that multiple task inside the classroom due to various restrictions like time constraint, burden of syllabus. More number of students and above all likes and dislikes of the learners. However, the same learners become enthusiastic as soon as they enter into language labs since the entire environment is totally different from regular classroom structure.

Computers provide excellent ambience conducive to second language learning in any aspect of the target language, be it vocabulary, composition, pronunciation or other linguistic and pragmatic skills.(Yugandhar, 2010)

Language labs create stress free learning atmosphere since there is no stringent monitoring of teachers as language labs supports self-learning system. The students get immediate feedback about their performances with out sentimentally being hurt that they get from their teachers in the class. In language labs, teachers become a trainer, a mentor, or a guide and sits idle until he/she is called for guidance to use the software.

Each student participates in this type of learning unlike most of them sit still in the regular classrooms. Moreover, the students are open to various elements that are remote possible in the classroom practices, for instance: the English language which is used by native speakers is brought before them. Grammar and vocabulary are taught with pictures, cartoons and animations which facilitate easy understanding and less chance of forgetting. In one click, everything is brought before the learners’ eyes.

Role of Teachers

Though technology has enormous positive features, it cannot succeed the teachers in providing sensible learning since teaching and learning connected with human emotions where technology has no role to play.

Cognitive approaches to communicative language teaching are based on the view that learning a language is a unique psycholinguistic process. From this perspective, language learners construct a mental model of a language system, based not on habit formation but rather on innate cognitive knowledge in interaction with comprehensible.”(Warschauer, M. and Meskill, C., 2000)

For instance, teaching grammar and vocabulary is impossible with out using the mother tongue of the students. For creating better understanding, the teacher has to be bilingual since the classroom will definitely have students of different levels of intelligences. The teacher perceives the difficulty of the students through their face reaction and immediately translates the concept into Tamil. This receives a big nod among the students, which is a positive sign of understanding. Could multimedia do this? It treats all the students the same and never bothers about the physical or psychological reactions of the learners.

Teacher or Technology

Exposing the students to the language of native speakers is a welcoming aspect. But the ground reality is that no one is using the accent of native speakers in our locality and it is impossible too, since pronunciation is also arbitrary. We use pronunciations for our comforts. In India, there is no uniformity of using English pronunciation. English used in each state varies due to the influence of its mother tongue. The word “office” has different pronunciation in Tamilnadu and Kerala. In such cases, using native speakers’ accent in India or in our native town will appear to be flamboyant. Everyone has to understand that language is a medium of communication and it’s vain to imitate and use others style of speaking in the society that is not familiar to such utterances.

Monotony exists much in multimedia lessons when compared to regular class room lessons since, In classroom the teachers function as facilitators in providing all sort of information by collaborating the concept with current affairs, history, literature, science, psychology, medicine, geography, politics, philosophy, etc. This is kind of instruction builds the aptitude of the students in all fields. Moreover, only teachers can bring live and realistic learning experiences because only teachers can adjust themselves with the requirements of the situation for pulling or pleasing the students’ attention towards them. They come up with a story, a riddle, a joke, a narration, a comment along with regular lessons which definitely bring interest among the students.

Conclusion

Nature remains undefeated in spite of the evolution of artificial intelligences because of its longevity, stability and power. Manufacturing technologies as per the need is justifiable today but depending solely on them not justifiable in the field of teaching since teaching is a conversation between two minds. Encoding and decoding happens not through binary codes, i.e. the computer language but through psychological codes. It is vague to believe that only technology can bring creative and realistic learning environment. Technology is just an aid for teaching creatively and realistically but the complete innovative ingredient is the teachers themselves. This paper concludes by stressing technology could only train and could not teach. Language is an emotional intelligence that should be taught first and trained next.