Tuesday, September 21, 2004

CMC-does writing training help speaking proficiency?

These days I've been thinking how blogs can help learners develp their speaking proficiency; since I knew the term CMC (Computer-mediated-communication), I read a lot of articles describing about how computer can provide global communication, enhance students' motivation, improve students' writing skills...and etc. Let's just not talk about the chatting tools! what about e-mails and blogs??? Yes, I do believe that they both can improve students' writing skills when globally communicate with others. What about their speaking ability???

It is proposed by Braine in his article 'Using Lans' that when students write in the target language, they actively think about the content(Fotos &Browne (ed.), 2004); i would say this is quite similar to the way how information is processed and given out in speaking tasks. Hmm...does that mean that training students to write can also improve their speaking???

Just like now...I am writing something..and at the same time I am kind of speaking to myself... speaking and writing and both kind of 'creation' and 'language output'.

I would say the output for both kind of communication can be similar; in writing forms, we can use symbols to express emotions :p we can kind of exaggerate our language by using CAPITAL LETTERS or changing the spelling (eg. you are soooooooooooooo beauutiful!!).

However, when giving output, we need to understand input first, especially in speaking task. To be able to understand someone is a prerequisite; listening and speaking, however, are very different.

So...I would like to assume that trainging students to write may not necessarily help them in spekaing; or probably may not 100% helpful???


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