Pietro Gentile

Evaluation: Book review

Book reviewed:

The Internet and the Language Classroom
Cambridge Handbooks for Language Teachers

Gavin Dudeney

2000
ISBN 0-521-78373-9

181 pp.

Cambridge University Press
Cambridge, UK

Book contents

This book is a useful guide for those language teachers who want to introduce and integrate Internet resources into their syllabuses but, because of lack of Knowledge or experience, need practical and operative advice.

In the initial overview of the book contents, the author provides the reader with a reading scheme in which he lists the main topics of the five sections of the book. Among these we find an introduction to different aspects of the Internet (software, different modes of communication, finding and classifying resources, etc), a consideration of the practicalities of the Internet as a resource bank and a classroom tool, Internet activities at all levels, an examination of how to set up simple web-based and email projects, suggestions to teachers on how to increase their knowledge and skills on the Internet, answers to FAQs, a list of useful web sites, a brief guide to the most common Internet terminology, a sample web site review form and, in the end, a release form for use with student work to be published on the Internet.

“Meat” of the book

In his Introduction the author announces his intention of bringing “a bit of focus, structure and meaning to the Internet” in order to get language teachers get the most from this “exhilarating medium”. He observes that the Internet has been described as the biggest communications revolutions since the advent of the printed book and could be the perfect medium for language teachers involved in the communication process at a very basic level.; nevertheless, comments along the lines of “I finally got connected, but I just can’t find anything” or “I searched for material on Australia, but there were over seven million pages and I just didn’t know where to start”, are very common.

After reading the book, I can say that the author has kept his promise: he deals with the announced topics with competence and expertise, uses a clear and effective language and makes use of graphics, “tips” and “hands on” to make his presentation as practical as possible.

Among the general aspects which he deals with in the first part of the book (Guidelines), the best treated are, in my opinion, the ones concerning the Internet as a classroom tool. In particular, the author gives useful suggestions on some important issues: the preparation of Internet-based classes, access to computers, computer room layouts, speed of access, page caching, technology breaks, control keeping, “questionable” Internet content.

In the second part the author introduces fifty-five Internet activities, classified by theme (e.g. Animals, Art, Cinema, …., Clothing…, Entertainment…, Food…Sport, etc) and level (young learners, elementary, lower intermediate, mid-intermediate, upper intermediate, advanced, business English). All the activities are structured according to a four-step model including Preparation of the activity, Online work, Offline work, Follow-ups and variations).

In the third part of the book (Projects), the author deals with some major issues concerned with Internet-based collaborative projects, including Email penpal exchanges, Writing projects, Web-based projects. Again, he gives useful advice on operative matters like how to start a project, how to find partners, how to get student work published, how to use basic HTML, how to add images to Web pages, etc.

The fourth part (Advanced Net) provides language teachers with suggestions as to what they can do in order to improve their basic Internet competences, with particular reference to browser enhancements, mailing lists, online chat, browser caching.

In the end (Part five), the author provides the reader with answers to the most common FAQs on the Internet, including issues like connecting to the Internet, specific terminology, selecting Web sites, reviewing Web sites, publishing student material.

Conclusion

In this brief review, I have summarised the contents of this book and I have expressed an overall positive opinion on it. This comes from my awareness of the fact that many language teachers, though provided with good theoretical and methodological competence, still lack the basic skills necessary to introduce the Internet in their classroom. I think that the author of this book manages to provide such teachers with the basic Internet knowledge and to motivates them to go deeper into this absolutely not to be ignored FLT area.

No negative remarks then? Well, if a weakness is to be found in this book, it can be the lack of explicit and articulated references to the author’s views on FLT theory and practice, even though the author’s methodological perspective comes out implicitly from his practical and operative presentation. Besides, most of the issues covered in the book are “neutral” to FLT theoretical approaches and are propaedeutical to any methodological choice.