Chapter 1

Context details

1.1 - My working environment

I teach English in an Italian Technical Secondary School for Industry (Istituto Tecnico Industriale).

This type of schooling consists of a “biennio” - first and second  years - after which the students choose a “triennio” (three years) of specialisation (Electronics, Mechanics and Chemistry in my school).

Recently another type of course has been introduced in the school, called Liceo Scientifico Tecnologico, a unique course of five years, without any division between biennio and triennio,  in which the students receive a more general scientific and technological teaching related to all the principal fields of science and technology together with a good linguistic and humanistic preparation.

After 5 years of primary school and 3 years of middle school, at the age of 14, Italian students should choose to attend a Technical Secondary School if they prefer technical and scientific subjects. Unfortunately this does not happen frequently. The “unofficial” logic that determines the choice is the following one: the best students go to the Liceo Classico (classical studies) or to the Liceo Scientifico (scientific studies), the not so good / not so bad students go to the Istituto Tecnico for industry or for commerce, and the worst ones go to the Istituto Professionale (vocational school),  in spite of personal preferences, attitudes and passions. Actually, it has to be added that students of 14 are often unaware of their attitudes and have no specific preferences, and that their choice depends also on the socio-economic conditions of their family that choose a technical or a vocational school for them in the hope they can immediately make use of the final diploma in the work world.

In my school, as in all technical schools,  there are some good students that have chosen to  deepen their scientific and technological area of knowledge because it is their favourite one and they will succeed in acquiring an adequate background in this field and become either good engineers or good university students if they decide to go on studying; there are many others who have chosen this school for no specific interests and will complete their studies often among difficulties, in some cases it will take them more than 5 years, and they will not acquire an adequate level of professional and cultural competencies they can effectively make use of in the world of work; a number of them will never complete their studies and will never get a secondary school diploma.

The case of the Liceo Scientifico Tecnologico course is a bit different, as this course has no vocational aim and the students who decide to take it are usually good ones, who like scientific subjects and whose intention is to go on studying at the university.

I teach in seven classes, the smallest has 19 students, the biggest 30. I have one class of an Electronics “triennio” and six classes of the Liceo Scientifico Tecnologico.

Each of my classes can be considered a mixed ability class, as, year after year, the students acquire more and more different levels of language mastery. This depends on their aptitude and attitude towards language learning, and, above all, on their motivation to communicate by using a foreign language.

I have been responsible for the multimedia lab for some years and I am interested in new technologies applied to teaching. I have some knowledge about computers only because I think they may be useful to English teachers in their job, but I am not a computer addict, I do most of my job far from the machines. 

1.2 - The problem to be researched

An important point to take into consideration in teaching concerns the reasons why the learning level of so many students is very often lower than the expected results. I cannot say lower with respect to given standards because in Italy there are not any standards yet, that are officially described and issued by the education authorities.

It is well-known that what negatively affects learning in most of the secondary school students is their lack of motivation, and the reasons are many, often they do not belong to the school sphere, the only one teachers can effectively try to change.

Teenagers between 14 and 19 years old are hardly ever driven by the instrumental motivation of the good job they can have after school, because the perspective of their future life as adults who work and gain a good salary seems extremely distant to them. Consequently teachers should base their work mainly on students’ intrinsic motivation, the one that is strictly connected to the quality and effectiveness of their didactic mediation, their capacity to involve the students in the process of learning, their capacity to change the environment in which the teaching/learning process occurs in order to favour and maximise the expected results. In this perspective teachers must constantly update their way of working and communicating simply because the young generations passing through their classes change.

We know that a relevant characteristic of modern life is the result of the tremendous input to communication and knowledge exchange given by the diffusion of  Information and Communications Technologies (ICT), and the Internet in particular, at every level[1]. We can also realise by observing the behaviour of the people around us – our children, students, friends, colleagues -  that technology is viewed with different eyes by adults and young people: still a novelty to discover and learn for most adults, part of ordinary life for most boys and girls. Young people do not consider the Internet as an extraordinary tool intended for a wealthy and technologically educated elite, as it was only few years ago, but as something usual that plays a daily role in their personal and social life.

 As teachers, we must realise that nowadays we can’t limit ourselves to introducing these powerful media into our schools just as a sign of modernity in themselves, as they are perceived as normality by our students. We must go a step ahead: we have to make a novelty of how we use and what we do with ICT at school, that is to say the experiences, the activities and the projects the students can do at school by using technology with the guide of the teacher. The real novelty that can catch students’ attention and gain their involvement is once again in the methodological approach teachers choose, in the way tools are used and not just in the tools chosen, in a word in the philosophy that is behind the strategy.

ICT introduced into teaching will be effective only if we do not use them to present the usual work in a new way, but only if we are aware of the new possibilities they offer to language learning: immediate access to a huge amount of resources and information, students’ exposure to an enormous quantity and variety of authentic and up-to-date material, possibility to carry out interpersonal exchanges and to establish an authentic contact with the outside world, possibility to carry on cooperative projects with foreign partners about topics of interest. These activities were almost impossible, or at least very difficult to carry out, and limited in number before the introduction of ICT and telematics, and can be considered the true innovations in ICT applied to education.

Online communication is an ideal support to the communicative approach, which is based on the equation "language = communication", on the analysis of the learners’ language and communicative needs, on the meaningfulness and the precise identification of the communicative aims of the language activities. The innovation lies in that the choice of introducing communication through ICT in language teaching involves a change in the way of searching and selecting language materials, building activities, giving tasks, organising work in class, planning projects, stating objectives, collaborating with other teachers, schools and social institutions. It is not simply the introduction of new powerful teaching aids into the usual routine in order to allow students to obtain better results. It is a more complex process that changes the perspective of both teachers and students in the way they consider the language and what they can do with it.

This is what I am interested in and this is why I have learned something about how to use computers.

What I would like to do in my dissertation is to investigate about:

-         how language teachers can use Web resources and the Internet services to build activities and    projects in their classes in order to improve students’ language/communication skills, and their language awareness

-         why and when using Web-based resources is an effective choice

-         what types of Web-resources are available for language teachers

-         how and when Web-based activities can be included in the language curriculum

-         what the advantages and disadvantages are in planning Web-based activities

-         what the advantages and disadvantages are in using authentic material from the Internet.

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