ALTERNATIVES IN ELT METHODOLOGY: WEBQUESTS

In Pursuit Of Alternatives In Elt Methodology: Webquests

IN PURSUIT OF ALTERNATIVES IN ELT METHODOLOGY: WEBQUESTS

OUTLINE

Although the Internet has opened up a vast new source of information for university students to use as well as explore, many students lack the skills to find, critically evaluate and intelligently exploit web-based resources. This problem is accentuated in English-medium universities where students learn and use English as a foreign language. In these cases, the task of finding and extracting relevant and useful information is daunting for students. Also, they spend too much time looking for information and become demotivated or end up copying and pasting without enough time to think critically in relation to the issues.

In response to the challenges faced by students in effectively exploiting web-based resources, the School of Foreign Languages, Eastern Mediterranean University, has recently begun using a new approach developed in the late nineties in America known as WebQuests. The Modern Languages Division of the SFL provides service English courses for students studying in various departments, and one of its aims is to link English language with concepts used in the departments by benefiting from the resources on the Internet. The underlying principles inherent in the design and implementation of WebQuests provide a reason in addition to motivation for students to use and produce English with real tasks relevant to their departments while exploiting the richness of the Internet. It can be further surmised that the use of WebQuests has broader implications in helping students develop better digital literacy, even when English is not their native language. This study introduces the idea of WebQuests and the adaptation of this approach using sample tasks which were developed and piloted at the Modern Languages Division, SFL, EMU.

INTRODUCTION

It is impossible to deny the impact that technology has had on our lives today. The Internet, which has been with us for over forty years, has pervaded almost every orifice of modern society. It transcends cultural, physical and spatial borders; it encompasses developed and developing worlds; having an e-mail address or website has become as commonplace as having a telephone and now ELT practitioners are experimenting with the use of blogs and wikis in their teaching contexts. Schools, as the prototypes of the communities that we live in, must obviously provide an education that not only embraces the Internet but also equips our students with the ability to use it (or whatever information technology advances it will lead to in the future) wisely, productively and for the benefit of society.. (ZHAO 2007 37-51)

WebQuests

WebQuests were developed in America by Bernie Dodge in 1995, primarily for teachers in the secondary school system and for use with different disciplines regardless of the age groups of its users. Dodge (1995) defines a WebQuest simply as “an inquiry-oriented activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the Internet…” He further emphasizes the importance of WebQuests in an interview saying that it is a tool which creates ...