Following the lines of my comment made in class...
I suggested that in the end we still need the help of a human person. Nowadays with all the technology that exists, we are still struggling to build a machine capable of understanding what we utter.
It is undeniable the fact that using technology appeals students in a positive way, creating motivation to work on learning.
The option that caught my attention was the one of conference lessons. It is a nice option to be exploited. In this way the student does not have to leave his/her house and only needs internet connection in order to have real contact with a native teacher that will solve all doubts. However, I found it intriguing that: "Ironically, teleconferencing language courses are more readily accepted by
faculty curricular committees as being equivalent to the classroom experience".
In fact, to say the truth I did not know there were so many technological options to learn a foreign language. But still, the support of a real person is always needed, not only when using technologies, but also from the student point of view. I am sure most students feel lost when approaching learning a language without the support of a teacher (or any person with knowledge of the language) in any kind of way.
As we could read on the article, a study showed that the results of a group learning online compared with the traditional classroom environment are not too different. For this reason, I keep insisting that there is a lot to do in this aspect of learning. Though, this does not mean that I believe technology has no place in the learning process. Completly the opposite, I believe that nowadays we live in the digital era and everybody feels eager to do things that call their interest through using electronic devices. However, I have this nostalgic idea towards teachers. I do believe they are extremely important to the learning process.
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