In 1999, Paul was a Senior Teacher and IT trainer at the British Council, Lisbon. The purpose of this article is to outline briefly how IT can make a positive contribution to your teaching and suggest common-sensical methods to learn more about the area. The Internet Word Processing For many teachers, this is already a reality.
Word processing is the cornerstone of building computer skills.
Simply from a perspective of quickly making worksheets which can be infinitely revised and are instantly available for use much later should we need them again, it is difficult to argue with the usefulness of WP skills. Modern word processors do much more than just format and store documents, however. It is also possible to analyse and parse a text for its linguistic or discourse features with basic WP skills. The type of program which turns a text into a cloze test, or creates the format for, e.g. multiple-choice type exercises for the student to manipulate, is still with us in updated form. An interesting point about 'interactive' exercises is that increasingly the wherewithal to create the exercises themselves, so called 'authoring programs' are increasingly available although not necessarily accessible.