Virtual Classrooms in the EFL Classrooms

I will write today about the virtual classroom that I had last week, it was about "How Does Arabic Influence the Pronunciation of English?" by Miss. Peggy Tharpe. It was for one hour and for limited number of people, only 15 students and 2 teachers were involved. She explain why Arab people do not reach the accent of native speakers, the difference between the sound system in both languages and what is the solution for wrong Arab pronunciation. She believed that active listening skills necessary to differentiation between the almost similar sounds.

Virtual classrooms help learners to maximize their knowledge about a particular issue because they look to the issue from different angles; Arab teacher for sure will not have the same point of view as Europe teacher, as a result the learners will build their own beliefs about the issue and improve their critical thinking.

 However, virtual classrooms may have advantages and disadvantages as any other techniques of teaching which mainly determined by the context where learning will take place. The advantages definitely will relate to the improvement of learners' proficiency of the target language. For example, if there is no native speaker of the target language in the community, virtual classroom will help the learners to acquire the native accent of that language by connecting them with native speaker. Also, virtual classrooms help the administration of college or school to control the lack of teachers in a particular major, by making agreement with teachers form over the word to serve that majors' lectures. On the other hand, disadvantages will relate to the lack of motivation, of accessibility and the misunderstanding as a result of poor devices and communication.

In addition, virtual classroom can be used to facilitate the teaching and learning of English language if we make sure that the successful factors are available such as, perfect internet connection, good sound system ,or appropriate size of screen for the show .I completely believe on virtual classroom, but unfortunately it is not supported in the educational setting in Saudi Arabia.

Do teachers need to create web-based language activities for EFL students in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia? Why and why not?

Most teachers in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia use the classical methods of teaching the language, without any tendency to improve their teaching method according to the available invention of technology in their context. They have to involve the technology in their syllabus design and create their own web-based activities. There are two reasons can be considered under the necessity of web-based activities for EFL learners in the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, from my point of view.

          First reason, is to cover the gap that usually happens because the lack of actual practice of language. When a teacher provides an alternative environment of actual social practice in a web, she\he definitely helps the learners to gain the same advantage of actual social use.

The second reason is doing what she\he can not do in the classroom because the limitation of time,45-50 minutes are not enough for the teacher to help her\his learners to acquire the target language perfectly. She/he can create a variety of material and activities through the internet that affecting the learners' proficiency of language.

Web-based activities should be considered as essential part of the learning process in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I can simply describe web-based activities as teachers' homework.