Extract 1
The history of technology in language teaching could not be linear in a country like ours where social
differences prevent technologies such as paper, the book, and even the electricity is within everyone's reach.
Many obsolete technologies, such as the slide projector, for example, have never reached in certain schools.
The computer has already been integrated into the language teaching of some institutions and many
teachers have already adopted a didactic material accompanied by CD-Roms. It has already been possible to
observe a gradual change of many who rejected in principle the innovations brought by the computer and
the Internet. Although this technology continues to be seen by some as a miracle cure and by others as something to be feared. It is quite possible that the computer does not reach everyone, but it is necessary to
remind that neither the book nor the computer will be miracles in the learning process. The success of
acquiring a foreign language depends on the learner’s insertion in activities of social practice of language
(…).
(PAIVA, V. L. M, O USO DA TECNOLOGIA NO ENSINO DE LÍNGUAS ESTRANGEIRAS: breve retrospectiva histórica 2017, pag. 14 - Disponível em: http://
www.veramenezes.com/techist.pdf)
Extract 2
(…) I no longer need to make the case for computers to be provided in education, because computers are
there in abundance in all their modern forms. We may see traditional computers in labs, teachers and
students walking around with laptops or tablet PCs, and many people will have a mobile phone in their
pocket that is capable of doing rather more than the mainframe computers that started computer-assisted
language learning in the 1960s. I do recognise that there are many kinds of digital divide, and that this is not
true everywhere.
What can put teachers off using technology
What is still sometimes an issue is the reliability of these technologies for classroom use. This can discourage
teachers from making use of technology as often as they would want to. It's compounded by the fact that, if
these teachers are working in schools, they are faced with classes of learners who may, on the surface at
least, appear to be more digitally competent than their teachers are. Learners can therefore challenge their
teachers, in ways that put the latter off using the technologies that could potentially make such a difference
to what happens in the classroom.
(…)
(Motteram, G., The benefits of new technology in language learning. Disponível em:https://www.britishcouncil.org/voices-magazine/the-benefits-newtechnology-language-learning. 18 September 2013.)
According to the extracts we can say: