MALL: Technology and Pedagogy

By Ira Ernawati

Technology develops very fast day by day. Hence it can provide everything than we want easily. It also has many various types. One type of technology which is used in teaching and learning language is MALL (Mobile Assisted Language Learning). From the word ‘Mobile’, we can see that type of this technology is available and portable.

I think MALL can make our teaching and learning language more flexible especially for student who can not join class directly, do not have face to face learning and also for students who have problem with distance because they study far away.

MALL applications which we can use in teaching and learning language are

1.      Cell Phones

Basically cell phone is often used in communication but nowadays it can be utilized in as the facility in teaching and learning language. The teacher can use it for sharing material or lesson for example by SMS text messaging. The other way, the teacher can use it to help listening class. It also can be use to record teacher or student dialogue in the conversation class. Well, modern cell phone, it usually provides high application as like dictionary and internet access for example Yahoo, Google and blog. Hence student can use it to search the material. Finally, the teaching and learning language can be easily.

2.      IPod

It is one kind of MALL application in teaching and learning language which usually can be use in listening class. It helps the teacher to assess students’ listening skill. It provides high-quality audio and sound.

3.      PDAs

Persona Digital Assistants here is like camera digital. We can use it to record material in speaking class for example is by making a record of students’ role play .

As the teacher candidate, we should realize that all MALL application which I have already mentioned have strength and weakness. So we should understand it well and use it wisely. The strength from those applications is it is portable application. It can be use everywhere and every time and it is usually less expensive. the weakness that we should know that it does not provide good visual and the size is also limited.

Well, today MALL goes to CALL, Computer Assisted Language Learning. It is because CALL has high quality visual and audio than MALL. Even it is really good but it still has weakness. It is not portable application so we can use it outdoor. Whatever the application and technology that we are going to use. The main point that we should realize is technology is not everything. We can not only rely on it in teaching and learning language. Understanding pedagogy is more important thing and it is a basic thing of teaching. It is a study about teaching itself. If we can understand it well it will help us to teach effectively. We also can consider what kind of technology which appropriate to apply in our teaching MALL or CALL.

Hopefully, what I have learned in TLL can help me in preparing myself in teaching someday.