Abstract

"Design and completion of online tasks for the Certificate in Spoken and Written English (CSWE): teacher idealisations and learner realisations".

A significant change in language teaching seems to be the adoption of networked computers as vehicles for accessing authentic resources for language development. This paper will present the perceptions of teachers and their learners regarding the value of online tasks. It will focus on the area of mismatch between the teachers' and their learners' perceptions regarding the most valuable aspects of an online task. The thread that emerged in a study conducted within the context of the Adult Multicultural Education Services in Melbourne, Australia was that the language learners want to be active participants in what the Web has to offer. They perceive their language development needs best met by communicating with a wide audience outside the classroom and contributing to Websites as their real-life language practice. The way the teachers in this study structured, contextualised and presented their online tasks to the students, accentuating their most important aspects, resulted in highly positive outcomes. The teachers, however, overlooked the value of networked computers as a medium of global communication.