When Sally Staddon first started teaching French, her tools of trade were some chalk, a blackboard and her own experience of France.
These days, the Monash lecturer is just as likely to get her students to click onto the Internet to listen to a live French radio broadcast or plan a train journey.
Ms Staddon belongs to a growing number of language teachers using new technology to explore other languages and cultures. "It's a fantastic window for students to take a look into another culture," she says.
Monash University is among a handful of Australian universities committed to exploring and expanding the integration of technology into language learning. And Monash is leading the field in the devel-opment and integration of interactive on-line resources.
"Our biggest resources are for Vietnamese and Korean and we are also developing web resources for Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish," explains Monash Language Centre director Associate Professor Uschi Felix.
Late last year, Dr Felix released a book and CD-ROM package aimed at helping both language instructors and students make sense of the myriad educational opportu-nities on the Internet.
Virtual Language Learning: Finding the Gems Amongst the Pebbles is the product of many months of hard slog for researchers who had to comb a cluttered cyberspace for relevant and worthy sites.
The book/CD-ROM package has the potential to change the way teachers teach languages and students learn them, explaining how to make the best use of the technology, as well as highlighting key sites for particular languages.
Beneficial sites range from traditional ones containing instruction on pronunciation and dialogue to interactive sites that give feedback, and chat sites that provide authentic interaction in the target language.
"One of the most exciting things is that now you can actually get a group of students to communicate with people in France or give them project work on meaningful issues," Dr Felix explains.
Students doing a project on the Louvre, for example, need no longer just write an essay on the topic. Via the Net they can correspond with someone in France who has visited the Louvre or they can go on a virtual tour themselves.
Such culturally relevant exercises are not limited to European languages, which are well represented on the Net. Students learning Chinese can take a virtual journey through China along much the same route as revolutionary Communist forces, using the technology to help them find their way.
Students are also able to use commercial CD-ROMs as part of their language studies. Monash however, is committed to developing its own resources, as few of the commercially produced CD-ROMs can be successfully integrated into classes.
- By Peta Kowalski
French lecturer Ms Sally Staddon and Language Centre director Associate Professor Uschi Felix.