Evaluating CD ROMs for Pre-Primary English Courses in the Czech Republic and Slovakia

Abstract

Living in the digital age means that modern information and communications technologies (ICT) have penetrated into every aspect of human lives, including education. Despite the fact that ICT are widely used in educational setting, many educators (and parents) have nevertheless remained concerned about how to adapt them into children’s education meaningfully and effectively. The use of ICT in education in general, and in preschool institutions in particular, has become an important research issue. The study focuses on evaluating multimedia CD-ROMs published in two countries with the intention to be used in pre-school institutions for the introduction of English as a foreign language to the youngest learners (children 3 – 6 years). The results point to the fact that majority of the CD ROMs offered activities which were marked as “robotic”, “glib”, “static”, and “empty” (built upon simple and usually mechanically repeated instructions), never reached beyond mechanical memorisation of English vocabulary in any entertaining way. The author calls for designing cognitively challenging materials which could support development of higher cognitive or affective functions of very young learners.

Using English Movies and Tv Programs for Developing Listening Skills of Efl Learners

“…The obtained data illustrate that the students who watch English movies and TV programs 3 and more hours a day achieved the highest scores (23.3). Moreover, the participants who were exposed to watching English movies and TV programs 1 hour a day obtained a slightly better mean listening test score (19.8) in comparison to those who watch movies and TV programs 2 hours a day (19). The difference between the test scores of the participants who watch English movies and TV programs 1 hour a day and 2 hours a day, however, seems to be of minor importance.…”

“…The listening test scores are displayed in Table 1 and Figure 1. The highest average can be observed with the students who watch English movies and TV programs 3 and more hours a day (23.3), followed by those who view movies and TV shows 1 hour a day (19.8), and the participants that are exposed to watching movies and TV programs 2 hours a day (19).…”

“…"It is a fact that technology is in every part of our lives" [15, p. 2587]. Thus, technologies affect most aspects of our daily work as they have produced changes in every sphere of society [16], [17], including education [18], [19]. Moreover, they help EFL learners enhance their language abilities [20], [21].…”

PhD graduates at Czech Universities: the Account of their Study, Postdoc Options and Job Ambitions

“…This language has become a primary means of scientific communication and its command becomes a prerequisite to doing research. Therefore, universities provide courses to remove the obstacle that a student has little or no command of English (Pokrivčáková, 2017;Králová, 2018). However, it takes a longer period of time for a student to acquire at least the reading knowledge of the language.…”