APPLYING NEW TECHNOLOGIES IN THE ENGLISH TEACHING: ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES

The English teaching has always been a complex process that has concerned the teachers for many years. Because of that, some teachers and pedagogists carried out several researches in order to find one teaching strategy that fits properly to each kind of student according to the level and the age. That quest that pedagogists started to find the appropriate strategy was the most difficult one to find because no strategy really adjusted well to the students level or age, but mainly to the students needs. After some time, there were a lot of strategies and new ways to teach English, each pedagogist had found a different way of teaching English in different ages and levels and they started to apply them during their classes making the teaching process more meaningful for them and the learning process more meaningful for students. Everything went good but there was something they did not took into account after carrying out their research projects, it was the pass of the time. We all know that the time passes and some things tend to change, like people. Soon, English learners were not showing interest in the classes, that was because the strategies found in the past were adjusted just for the people of that time and those strategies now were disadjusted for the people of the new generation. New researches started to investigate about new teaching strategies and methodologies that could adjust well to the current environment of teaching, and they found it. This fact kept repeating after each new generation of English learning and new researchers had to find proper strategies according to the new time and the new learners needs. This phenomenon occurs as a cycle and it will keep repeating while humanity still existing. But why? many people ask about, the answer is very simple, Students need changes along with the time, and with time technologies change too, and it is not a secret for anyone that learners are highly related to the use of technologies in their common life. That was maybe the best fact discovered in the teaching field. Into the light of this new discovery, new researchers started again to shake the researching field in order to find new strategies, this new strategies should be adjustable with the pass of the time and not to be completely useless. That was a really hard labor from researchers but they did it well. Nowadays we still using some of their approaches but changing them just a little, adjusting them to the new students needs and according to the real situations that are very different that the ones from many years ago. Another important aspect to take into account is that not only technologies change, people also change and with them the new teachers. Teachers in the past were just concerned about teaching and no more, nothing else matter to them, the social and economical situation were not as hard as the current time so the teachers just worried about the daily lesson at the school or classroom, and this was the same not only in the English field but also In the other subjects. Nowadays is different, social and economical situation is pretty rude with learners and teachers. Some of the learners are very poor and come into the classroom without any wish to study or learn at least a few, maybe because they did not eat anything before coming class, or maybe they were forced to study in order to receive the government money, maybe they were having violence problems in their

houses, maybe they were being sexually abused by someone; There are a lot of social and economical problems nowadays and the teacher must not only concern about teaching the subject, the teacher must also be concerned about the learners physical and mental integrity. For instance, teachers must be always walk by hands with the learners, not just teaching and no more but being their friend, talking to them in extra class, asking them how is everything going, the teacher role in these times Is very important, that is why teaching now is far different from one hundred years ago. All these new situations hardens the teacher labor, but that is only speaking about learners, the teachers have also to handle many problems associated to their social status and policies. In the case of Colombia, the government is not paying a teacher what he deserves, some of them are threatened and they have to quit teaching. Most teachers are involved in sexual abuse cases with students. Some teachers are going to teach while they face a starving or rental in his house. That is why teaching before was not as hard as now. The current teacher has to adapt himself to the students needs, to his own needs and to the current status of the surrounding area, but also to make the classes meaningful to the learners adjusting well his strategies according to each context and because of that, the teacher must be on vanguard with the technology, the time and the students needs. That is an obligation, a requirement to be teacher in the current days. Although it is really hard to teach any subject nowadays, there are some new strategies and approaches found in the research field that are very useful in order to ease our labor as teachers. The strategies must not be radicalized into time; we all know we have to keep changing them but there are some good ones existing, because of that exists an eclectic approach. This approach takes the best of each strategy or methodology and creates a good teaching tool for teachers and a good learning method for learners. This approach include the enhance of listening, speaking, writing and reading skills, but also the use and the management of the new technologies and the classes for the teacher. There are a lot of technological aids to reinforce the teaching such as internet (facebook, wikis, skype, blogs, forums, video conferences, online lessons, online interactions etc.), audiorecordings, videoclips, digital dictionaries (most common in cellphones). Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook Inc. As of February 2012, Facebook has more than 845 million active users. Users must register before using the site, after which they may create a personal profile, add other users as friends, and exchange messages, including automatic notifications when they update their profile. Additionally, users may join common-interest user groups, organized by workplace, school or college, or other characteristics, and categorize their friends into lists such as "People From Work" or "Close Friends". The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by some university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other. This is a good tool in order to keep contact with your students and to make the learning process a little different than the usual stimulating the motivation for learning in learners. Here you can keep learners informed about new topics, changes in the class

management and other kind of information. The main disadvantage of this tool is that learners can focus their attention in other things, as it is a social network there are a lot of other things to do there like watching pictures, watching videos or chatting other people; they can do many things different to study. (Wikipedia, 2012). The wikis are websites where the user can add any kind of information or modify it if it is wrong. This tool can be used for teaching as a tool to enrich previous knowledge and correct other people mistakes. Here, the user can upload any kind of information. If this is a wiki about teaching, you have to upload just topics related to it; if it is a health field wiki, you have to upload information about health care and so on. Another Excellent virtual and technologic tool is called Skype. Skype is a software that allows the user to make calls to other people around the world via internet. This tool not only supports call, but also videocalls and videoconferences with two or more people simultaneously. This can be used to create a speaking/listening group with your students to enhance those skills. Other important aspect is that you can speak with other people around the world having contact with the native speakers and improving our skills at the same time. The main disadvantage of skype is that it depends in your internet connection, if it is slow, you can experience some communication problems with the other people and hinder the whole process. A blog (which refers to web log) is a personal journal published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete entries ("posts") typically displayed in reverse chronological order so the most recent post appears first. Blogs are usually the work of a single individual, occasionally of a small group, and often are themed on a single subject. Users can create a blog in order to post information about a singular field, it can be teaching, politics, reading, poetry, nature, physics etc. The best part of a blog is that other bloggers (people who are the managers of other blogs) can subscribe to your blog and create a community where you can debate about anything related to the field of the blog, giving to you feedback or error corrections, it helps to improve the learners communicative skill because they have to write and at the same time read what other people have written. An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages. They differ from chat rooms in that messages are at least temporarily archived. Also, depending on the access level of a user or the forum set-up, a posted message might need to be approved by a moderator before it becomes visible. This virtual aid becomes helpful when the user has a doubt, he just asks a question and the belonging people in that forum can answer your question if they know the answer. It gives you good feedback, feedback from first hand and reliable sources. Videoconference is practically the same that a videocall but improved because you can hold a videocall with two or more people from different locations simultaneously, giving real experience. Actually, many academies use this strategy to involve their learners into real contact with the language, the most common software used by people to do this is skype, nice

sound quality and its usage is free. It also has a small chat window in case that the videoconference starts experiencing connection problems. There are a lot of new technologies teachers can use to have a good performance in class and a good learning process in students; however, there are some disadvantages in these tools. The most common disadvantage is that all this tools are virtual and may experience technical problems, if this happens, the teacher must have a plan b. Therefore, the teacher who applies these tools has to know about technologies, is higly required to know or to have previous knowledge about how to use technology. Teachers must be on vanguard and keep advancing at the same time with technologies because being a teacher requires it. Using new technologies in the English Teaching does not guarantee that the learners are going to learn, it depends completely in the teacher and how is he going to get the maximum benefits of it. A good teacher teaches with the tools he has in his hands and in his mind. It does not matter if a teacher has everything to teach, but if he does not know how to use those tools, that teacher has serious problems. We need good teachers, teachers who live daily the students needs in order to teach well. That is the only way we can encourage students to improve this rotten world; that is not utopic anymore.