Integrating technology in ESL writing

With the rapid development of science and technology, the emerging and developing of multimedia technology and its application to teaching, featuring audio, visual, animation effects comes into full play in English class teaching .It's also sets a favorable platform for exploration on English teaching in new era.

There are many advantages not only to students but also to the teachers itself. From the students’ perspective, there are some advantages that will benefit them. Firstly, using technology can cultivates students’ interest and motivation in their study and their involvement in class activities. Other than that, through technology students may widen their knowledge to gain an insightful understanding to western culture because technology can provide students abundant information more than what the textbook can provide. They can also learn about western culture/ other country culture just by using internet as not everyone is afford to go abroad to really see other country culture. When they had learnt about others country, they will able to come out with an essay that involving describing the places that they want to visit the most.

In contrast, using technology can also 'harm' students in several ways. In order to complete some assignments students were required to online using internet, so for some students it is easy for them to get distracted to log in to facebook, twitter and so on. This situation will makes them forget about their assignments and keep delaying to complete their work. As a result, they will only manage to complete their assignments the day before the submission date, well the last minute things won’t be able to give best result and this will affect the students mark and indirectly will affect their academic achievement.

In conclusion, it is depends on us students on how to cope with the development of technology. If we use it for the right purpose then technology will really benefits us but if we use it for other purposes than study then technology will be the one that will ‘destroy’ us.