Digital Technology

    The article I read is about  how microblogging (take twitter as an example) contributes to the second language acquisition comparing to the traditional computer-mediated communication such as instant messages and e-mails. Though we have not yet know the measurable results about how much students can benefit from microblogging, we can find that it has four features: participatory, authentic, immediate, community engaging to be able to create a promising language learning environment outside of classroom. Because of the form of twitter, the content members update can reflect individual's point of view, and open to everyone in the community, which is similar to real conversation in group setting. And from the questionare data, 94% of students agreed that the tweets were relevant to real-life language use because they can get authentic contact with native Italian speakers. Like hybrid platform of instant messages and e-mails, twitter can adapt itself to both synchronous and asynchronous modes. Students can immediately engage their followers by reply tweet but also can have more time than texting instant messages to plan their writing, edit their spelling, grammar, and punctuation before posting a tweet. In my opinion, this form's topics are limited to self daily status expression and culture discussion of target language, which is suitable for intermediate level language learners.
    I would like to use a variety of technology in language learning if they can arouse students' initiative of interacting and practicing. And I prefer to use social networking tools like facebook that students can have diverse tasks to work with, and twitter that has many topics students can talk about, and most importantly, students only need to use concise language to express their opinions by these tools, which will not be a burden to them.
    And the virtual city showed in this video is cool, teachers can let students involve in any language environment such as restaurant, airplane, which achieve the environment that in classroom we cannot simulate. However, limited by the design of the characters, students cannot perceive the real face expression or body language of teacher or classmates they are talking with.