In current society, online courses have become more and more popular, and are replacing face-to-face teaching step by step. Especially, due to the prevalence of COVID-19 recently, many schools around the world have substituted online teaching for their courses. This greatly reduces the spread of the disease and also allows students not to disrupt their study plans. The advantages of online learning are mainly reflected in its convenience and rationality.
Its most advantage is that students can study at home, for which a computer or a smartphone is enough. Teachers can achieve one-to-many teaching through Zoom. In the course of teaching, teachers can start the video program so that students can replay the class video after class. If students have any question about the content of the class, the video can help them better solve the corresponding problems. If students still have any question that they don’t understand, they can contact teachers via Zoom and teachers can answer them one-on-one. This not only saves teachers’ time, but also improves the efficiency of students. The future learning pattern will inevitably put efficiency in the first place as effective learning enables students to grasp knowledge more firmly and better use their knowledge in real life.
As we all know, most learning websites now have many network tools, such as those websites making plans for students. Students can recite 20 English words a day there and can set an alarm clock at a specific time to remind them. Then the websites turn the words recited every day into a quiz to test students’ learning results. Moreover, in the next day, the words learned a few days ago are also appeared in different frequencies, making students better master the words they have learnt according to the memory forgetting curve.
Nevertheless, online teaching lacks the interaction between teachers and students in class, face-to-face teaching helps students and teachers to become friends, and communication between students is also an important part of learning. Therefore, online teaching also has its shortcomings that cannot be ignored. Our EDCI339 program aims to teach us how to use the Internet to help students learn more efficiently. In the article “Comparing Face-to-Face and Electronic Discussion in the Second Language Classroom”，the Warschauer (1995) mention that for language learning, body language in face-to-face communication is very important. It allows people to express their emotions better. However, if people study language through online, it will ignore peoples’ body language.
Even if online learning still have many disadvantage, I believe that it still become more and more popular because learning efficiency will be most important in future learning mode. Therefore, we will find ways to make up for the weakness of online teaching, thus making online teaching more perfect.
Reference
Warschauer, M. (1995). Comparing Face-to-Face and Electronic Discussion in the Second Language Classroom. CALICO Journal,13(2/3), 7-26. Retrieved September 28, 2020, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24147896
