The Sections of the Lesson

In general, every section of the lesson includes Vocabulary, Dialogue, Grammar, Reading, and Workbook. Concerning every section of the lesson, the current situation of teachers’ integration of technology into teaching practices is presented in this section.

Vocabulary

While teaching vocabulary, teachers would use the CD player, the E-textbook, the PowerPoint, the songs or videos from the Internet to review vocabulary words, enhance students’ learning motivation and extend their learning. As Eric mentioned,

“While teaching vocabulary, I will use the CD player, the E-textbook, the videos from the Internet to enhance students’ learning motivation, extend the learning, advance the teaching process, and decrease the chances of using chalk for the sake of health”

(2012-10-16-TI-Eric).

Besides, when it comes to teaching vocabulary, every teacher has their own habit of integrating technology into instruction in different order. Two of the teachers, Eric and Diana, used the E-textbook while teaching vocabulary. Eric used it to let students listen to foreign teachers’ pronunciation and imitate it by clicking the vocabulary as much as he liked while Diana applied it to supplement the usage of the vocabulary words by offering students sentences with these words. Four of the teachers, Ben, Fiona, Gina, and Helen, employed CD players after teaching vocabulary since they

could have students review the vocabulary that they had just learned. Only one teacher, Cathy, stated that based on students’ English proficiency levels, she would decide whether she should implement the PowerPoint while or after teaching vocabulary. As she said,

If students are high achievers, I will use the PowerPoint to supplement sentence patterns and sentences with vocabulary words in each lesson while teaching vocabulary. If they are low achievers, I will apply the PowerPoint to show students pictures. By connecting these pictures with vocabulary words, they can improve their pronunciation and denotation of these words as well as enhance their learning achievement.

(2012-09-26-TI-Cathy)

Based on teachers’ responses, it was found that when teachers taught vocabulary, the CD player was employed more than the E-textbook and the PowerPoint. It seemed that the target school provided every teacher with their own CD player for instruction, so it was convenient for them to use it in class. Thus, the CD player was used by most teachers after teaching vocabulary in the classroom.

Dialogues

When teachers taught dialogues, they used the CD player, the E-textbook, the electronic interactive whiteboard or the videos to review the dialogue, to listen to foreigners’ pronunciation, to motivate students’ learning interests, accelerate the teaching process, and extend the learning. Take Alice as an example, she employed several types of technology to teach dialogues. As she revealed,

I only use the E-textbook in the seventh grade class, and I also use the CD player as well. I seldom use the E-textbook in the eighth and ninth grade class since the language use in the text does not correspond to that in real life. In addition to the text-reading CD, I use videos from the Internet most of the time to provide students with the authentic language use in real life and appropriately integrate major issues into instruction. As for the use of the electronic interactive whiteboard, I once used it in the seventh grade class, but now I seldom use it because of the inappropriate seat arrangement, the improper equipment design of the E-learning classroom as well as lack of sufficient teaching software which can be applied to the electronic interactive whiteboard. (2012-09-20-TI-Alice)

In addition, English teachers used technology to teach dialogues in different order. Seven of the teachers, Alice, Ben, Cathy, Diana, Fiona, Gina, and Helen, had students listen to the CD or watch the animation in the E-textbook before teaching

dialogues to motivate their interests and let them have a basic understanding of the content. For example, Alice would ask students comprehension questions after they listened to the CD to make sure they understood the main idea of the dialogue. Two teachers, Eric and Diana, used the E-textbook while teaching dialogues. Diana mentioned, “The E-textbook has the same content as students’ textbooks, so it is convenient for me to teach with it instead of using the teaching aids while teaching dialogues” (2012-10-09-TI-Diana). Eric employed the E-textbook for another reason.

As he stated,

I do not have to write on the blackboard while teaching dialogues since the E-textbook provides the sentence analyses of the dialogues. It is convenient for me to play the instructional animation or click a sentence from the dialogue, and this provides students with the contextual learning.

The E-textbook contains the whole text of a lesson, and I can click the whole dialogue or a sentence to let students not only repeat after it but also listen to foreign teachers’ pronunciation and the intonation change in the context of the dialogue. (2012-10-16-TI-Eric)

Three of the teachers, Alice, Diana, and Gina, employed technology after teaching dialogues for different reasons. Alice said that she would let students watch videos and listen to foreigners from other countries speaking English to extend the learning and improve their listening ability (2012-09-20-TI-Alice). Diana stated that students could review the dialogue by watching the animation in the E-textbook again (2012-10-09-TI-Diana). As for Gina, she revealed that students would familiarize the content and intonation that they had just learned by listening to the CD again (2012-10-19-TI- Gina).

Generalizing from teachers’ responses, the top three types of technology used by teachers were the CD player, the E-textbook, and the videos; the technology they used least was the electronic interactive whiteboard. It was very likely that teachers had access to these three types of technology more easily than the electronic interactive whiteboard, so they chose to use them to teach dialogues in the classroom.

Grammar

Three teachers, Cathy, Diana, and Eric, used the E-textbook to teacher grammar in order to review grammar, enhance students’ learning motivation, accelerate the teaching process, and extend the learning. As Diana said,

While teaching grammar, I use the E-textbook to have more opportunities to teach each student separately, make answer-checking more efficient, and improve class management. For example, the class was noisy when students wrote their answers on the blackboard, but now the class discipline is good since I start to check the answers with the E-textbook.

(2012-10-09-TI-Diana)

Moreover, three teachers, Alice, Cathy, and Gina, used the PowerPoint for grammar instruction. As Gina stated,

I once taught relative clauses with the PowerPoint because long sentences needed to be listed for explanation. For me, making the PowerPoint not only saves teachers’ time of writing on the blackboard but also enhances students’ learning motivation. However, I seldom use it because making the PowerPoint takes me a lot of time. (2012-10-19-TI-Gina)

In addition to applying the PowerPoint to teach grammar, Alice integrated songs, videos, online games, and online tests into grammar instruction with the purpose of reviewing grammar, enhancing students’ learning motivation, and extending the learning.

As for when they integrated technology into grammar instruction, these teachers employed it in different order. Three teachers, Cathy, Diana, and Eric, integrated technology when teaching grammar for several reasons. Cathy mentioned that she would teach grammar in a more organized way by using technology than writing on the blackboard (2012-09-26-TI-Cathy). Diana considered that it was very convenient for her to use the E-textbook to teach grammar and check answers after she had students do exercises in the textbook because the content of the E-textbook was the same as that of the textbook (2012-10-09-TI-Diana). Eric also revealed that he used the E-textbook to teach grammar since it was convenient for him to supplement the main points instead of writing them on the blackboard. Besides, the animation and the PowerPoint for grammar instruction in the E-textbook were offered based on students’

learning conditions (2012-10-16-TI-Eric). Only one teacher, Alice, reported that after teaching grammar, she would see whether students completely acquired the grammatical concept through the use of online games or the PowerPoint”

(2012-09-20-TI-Alice).

When it comes to teaching grammar with technology, the E-textbook and the PowerPoint were used the most by three teachers separately. Among these five

teachers who used technology to teach grammar, Alice, Cathy, Diana, and Eric used technology a lot in the classroom because they perceived it was a more efficient and organized way to teach grammar through the use of technology compared with the efficiency of writing on the blackboard. On the contrary, Gina she seldom used it to teach grammar since she found making the PowerPoint was time-consuming.

Therefore, these teachers’ perceptions of technology use seemed to influence their integration of technology into grammar instruction.

Reading

In terms of reading instruction, teachers integrated various types of technology such as the CD player, the E-textbook, videos, songs, the PowerPoint, and online tests into instruction in order to review the reading, enhance students’ learning motivation, accelerate the teaching process, increase the reading amount, and extend the learning.

Similar to the reasons for applying technology to teach dialogues, six teachers, Ben, Cathy, Diana, Fiona, Gina, and Helen, would use technology before teaching reading to let students have a basic understanding of the reading or motivate their interests. Among the five teachers, only Cathy would integrate several types of technology such as the E-textbook, the PowerPoint, or videos from the Internet into reading instruction. Diana used the E-textbook and the other four teachers, Ben, Fiona, Gina, and Helen, used the CD player to teach reading. While teaching reading, two teachers, Diana and Eric, used the E-textbook for the same reason as teaching dialogues. For example, Diana stated, “The E-textbook has the same content as students’ textbooks, so it is convenient for me to teach with it instead of using the teaching aids while teaching reading” (2012-10-09-TI-Diana). Another reason was emphasized by Eric. As he expressed,

I do not have to write on the blackboard while teaching reading since the E-textbook provides the sentence analyses of the reading. It is convenient for me to play the instructional animation or click a sentence from the dialogue, and this provides students with the contextual learning. The E-textbook contains the whole text of a lesson, and I can click the whole reading or a sentence to let students not only repeat after it but also listen to foreign teachers’ pronunciation and the intonation change in the context of the reading. (2012-10-16-TI-Eric)

Two teachers, Alice and Diana, integrated technology into instruction after teaching reading. Alice mentioned, “After teaching reading, I will use songs, the

PowerPoint, or online tests to provide students with relevant readings in order to increase their reading quality and quantity” (2012-09-20-TI-Alice). Moreover, Diana indicated that after teaching reading, she would click the whole reading or one sentence in the E-textbook to let her students repeat after the whole reading or some sentences (2012-10-09-TI-Diana).

According to the teachers’ responses, Alice and Cathy used to integrate several types of technology into reading instruction. As for the other teachers, Diana and Eric used the E-textbook to teach reading all the time; Ben, Fiona, Gina, and Helen always used the CD player to teach reading. Hence, teachers’ integration of technology into reading instruction may be related to their habit of using technology in the classroom.

Workbook

While teaching the workbook, five teachers, Alice, Ben, Fiona, Gina, and Helen, employed the CD player and three teachers, Cathy, Diana, and Eric, used the E-textbook to have students do listening exercises, review what they had learned, extend the learning, or accelerate the answer-checking process. For instance, Diana indicated that using the E-textbook to check the answers would help maintain the class discipline since students could see the answers directly on the screen without leaving their seats for writing answers on the blackboard, which would be very noisy sometimes (2012-10-09-TI-Diana). Also, Eric said that it was very convenient for him to use the E-textbook, which contained both listening and writing exercises in the workbook, and he could present the answers all at a time or separately (2012-10-16-TI-Eric). However, Alice had a different point of view. As she stated,

I have used the E-textbook in the seventh grade class several times. I do not think that it is a good way to check the answers through the use of the E-textbook, so I do not use it to check answers anymore. The reason is that if I use the E-textbook to check the answers, students just see the answers directly on the screen, and they do not have chances to write their answers on the blackboard. In this way, I do not know what their problem is.

(2012-09-20-TI-Alice)

Generally speaking, all of the teachers applied technology when teaching the English workbook. Alice, Ben, Fiona, Gina, and Helen used the CD player to let students do listening exercises. Cathy, Diana, and Eric employed the E-textbook to have students check the answers in the listening and writing sections because they regarded it as a convenient and efficient way for teachers to present all the answers on

the screen through the overhead projector. However, only Alice does not think that using the E-textbook to check answers in the workbook will benefit students in their learning, so she does not use it anymore. As a result, it was implied that teachers’

attitudes toward technology use would influence what types of technology they chose to integrate into their teaching practices.

Task or Exercises

Two of the teachers, Alice and Fiona, integrated technology into teaching practices by asking students to finish the task or do exercises on the Internet. For example, Fiona indicated, “My homeroom students joined in the CCOC (Connecting Classrooms Online Community) project when they were in the seventh grade. They had chances to practice English with British students by leaving and receiving messages on the Internet” (2012-10-16-TI-Fiona).

In addition, Alice revealed,

With the intention of extending students’ learning and reviewing what they have just learned, I sometimes ask students to hand in their homework to my blog or email box. Sometimes I also ask them to finish online tests or play some English games on several websites for practice.

(2012-09-20-TI-Alice)

As indicated above, Alice and Fiona made use of the task or the exercises on the Internet to extend students’ learning outside the classroom. For example, because of the CCOC project, students could practice English writing by discussing some issues with British students on the Internet. This may be considered a good opportunity to connect students with the target language and its culture, which supported the results of the previous studies (Arnold, 2007; Egbert et al., 2002). However, Alice and Fiona asked students to finish the task or do exercises on the Internet for different reasons.

Alice liked to integrate several types of technology into instruction, so she would make use of technology to ask students to do homework outside the classroom. On the contrary, Fiona who did not use technology much in class was assigned by the target school to do the CCOC project. Thus, it was noted that teachers’ technology use had something to do not only with teachers’ active attitudes toward technology integration but also with the education policies made by the Education Bureau of the city government.

Other situations

Three teachers, Ben, Eric, and Gina, used technology in other situations. For example, Eric stated that he would make use of online news and current events to educate students because it was convenient for him to show students online news or discussion forum through the Internet in the classroom (2012-10-16-TI-Eric). Ben mentioned, “I adopt technology because I have to train the students on the English club to prepare them for the English singing contest” (2012-09-26-TI-Ben). Gina used it while teaching festivals. As she reported, “As for the festival instruction, I let students listen to some English songs related to festivals so that they will have a better understanding of foreign cultures through the use of multimedia”

(2012-10-19-TI-Gina).

The teachers’ responses suggested that Ben, Eric, and Gina would use technology in some situations for different purposes. Eric used technology a lot in class, so it was easy for him to integrate online news into instruction. However, Ben and Gina who did not use technology much in class would use technology in some special situations such as the contest or the festivals. Consequently, whether teachers had a tendency to use technology in class would influence the frequency of using technology in some situations, which would be discussed in the next section.

In sum, with reference to every section of the lesson, most teachers used the CD player to teach vocabulary. The CD player, the E-textbook, or the videos were used the most to teach dialogues. The E-textbook or the PowerPoint were used the most to teach grammar. Various types of technology such as the CD player, the E-textbook, videos, songs, the PowerPoint, and online tests were integrated into reading instruction. The CD player or the E-textbook were used the most to teach the workbook. It is noted that teachers’ use of technology may be related to the accessibility of technology as well as their perceptions of and attitudes toward using technology in class.