Top Ten Strategies for Technology in ELL/Foreign Language Instruction

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Take advantage of these ten powerful strategies for using technology to enhance the teaching of both English and foreign languages.

1. Images downloaded from the Internet help illustrate language concepts — Illustrations help students learning to use English understand content and offer FL students opportunities set in places where the target language is spoken to discuss, describe, and speculate about what they see.
2. Interactive storybooks support language acquisition — Students can strengthen their language skills by hearing the language read to them.
3. Interactive software and handheld devices provide language skills practice — Students use these resources to get individual, private feedback as they practice their language skills.
4. Presentation aids help scaffold students' language use — The visual formats of presentation software and videos help students demonstrate their range of language skills in nontraditional, collaborative, and engaging ways.
5. Websites offer exercises for students to practice subskills — Online exercises are easy to access and provide intense practice in specific language skills and vocabulary sets.
6. Virtual collaborations provide authentic practice — Students who work with native speakers of the target language gain both valuable language learning opportunities and intercultural insights.
7. Virtual field trips provide simulated experiences — Students see people and plates in locations they could not visit otherwise.
8. Word processing — Students are able to check spelling and grammar as they practice writing in the target language.
9. Language labs support language acquisition — Students get personal instruction with monitoring, feedback, and authentic verbal interaction.
10. Web-based, authentic content — Websites designed for native speakers of the target language can offer students written and oral text on topics of interest in the target language and in the students' native language(s).