Best Practices Proposals

Best practices

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Conclusions

The integration of Internet in the language learning arena is forcing teachers to face new challenges. The most obvious is making the right use of the infinite number of authentic materials in diverse formats that cater for different students´ learning styles; from plain texts, to hypertexts heavily loaded with images, video, graphs and sound. Nevertheless, more recently, web 2.0 resources have even promoted a step forward from the receptive skills –reading and listening- to the productive ones –speaking and writing, allowing students to design, create and produce content in a number of formats that can be published and shared by a worldwide audience.

Whether teachers will be able to accompany this thrilling technological saturation does not depend only on their willingness and predisposition, but also on the teachers training proposals they are offered which should suit the different institutions and situations they are immersed in. Under these professional development programs, teachers have to feel at ease, in a relaxed and confident atmosphere, among peers who share their same fears and anxieties, while feeling supported and understood by experts who will be willing to scaffold their fragile attempts.

 These mentors should also accompany schools teachers in the design of challenging embedded tasks that can involve students in meaningful interactive contexts, demanding the authentic use of the target language for their resolutions. It is the teachers responsibility to accompany students to climb up the wall of the 21^st century goals; thus the tasks they get students involve in must foster not only the development of their communication skills in the target language, but also their critical thinking, collaboration and creativity.