2014 Articles

Potential of Voice Recording Tools in Language Instruction

Aoki, Sachiko

One of the most prevailing difficulties I have faced as an English instructor is students’ dependence on teachers even though many language classes have been shifting from teacher-centered to student-centered influenced by the communicative language teaching (CLT) approach. Class evaluations and needs analyses often reveal that many students expect every single one of their errors to be corrected by teachers. Some students even attribute their lack of improvement to not being corrected promptly. Prompt error correction or individualized feedback from teachers may be beneficial for students, but it is unlikely to be feasible for teachers to listen and respond to students individually all the time, especially given constraints such as large numbers of students and limited class time.