A thesis in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in

Integration of ICT in the English Language Classroom

The use of ICT in the classroom must be integrated into the learning to ensure effective learning. For the integration of technology in teaching and learning to be effective, teachers are required to know how learning occurs (Tan et.al., 2003). Based on the work of Roschelle, Pea, Hoadley, Gordin and Means (2000), it has been found that technology enhances the teaching and learning processes when pupils learn via active engagement and reciprocities actions based on the real-life situations.
Apart from knowing how learning occurs, teachers must also have a good knowledge of the pedagogy on how children learn language and also on how the learning can be enhanced with the use of ICT (Johnassen, 2000; Teeler, 2000; Wilson, 2002). With such knowledge, it is almost certain that the use of ICT will be an effective tool in enhancing the teaching and learning of the English language, especially EFL. That is, the proliferation of electronics aids will enable the teachers to choose from the best available solutions to suit their students learning needs.
As the use of ICT is not constrained to when teachers are teaching in class, therefore, students must have the initiative to use the ICT as their personal tool for learning too. Under such circumstances, the continued use of these tools should be thoroughly integrated throughout the curriculum after students have gained an initial functional level of expertise.
There tend to be two commonly used approaches to helping students learn to use tools. Here, the use of ICT can either be taught as a separate skill or directly

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integrated into the learning process itself. In the first approach, instruction in the tool occurs in an ICT course or unit of instruction. For example, in an elementary school a "computer teacher" might present the instruction in a computer lab. The second approach is for the instruction to be presented as part of a non-ICT course, with the instruction being presented by the regular classroom teacher. The same approaches are often used in teacher education programs (Morisund, 2007).

Thus, according to Morisund (2007:12), a good approach in the situation described above consists of:

1. 
   „The regular classroom teacher serves as an assistant in the computer lab as his or her students receive ICT instruction on generic applications.
   
2. 
   The ICT teacher and the regular classroom teacher work together to plan the computer lab instruction so that it incorporates activities that are relevant to the current curriculum in the regular classroom.
   
3. 
   The regular classroom teacher then immediately reinforces this integration of ICT into the regular classroom curriculum by class discussions and activities.‟
   

Another approach is to have the ICT teacher come to the regular classroom and work together with the regular classroom teacher to present instruction about ICT generic applications instruction. Still another approach is to have the classroom teacher or an ICT teacher provide instruction to a very small number of "early adopters" of a tool in a particular classroom, and then have these students

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provide one-on-one instruct to others in the class. It has been discovered that such peer instruction can be quite effective.

3.