Synchronic Tools in EFL Classrooms in Saudi Arabia

As a future language teacher, I will seriously consider using synchronic tools in my EFL classroom due to many reasons. Using synchronic tools like Synchronous electronic discussions could really benefit the students, they will let them interact on the academic basis even develop on the social basis. The students enter a‘chatroom’ and join a conversation throughout the learning process would really interest our students here in Saudi Arabia, it would be really fun and interesting as well.  Synchronic tools would provide more frequent opportunity for students to express their ideas than in oral discussions. Therefore, the target language will be used more, and it would encourage them to collaborate, motivates them to enhance their learning, and reduces anxiety in oral face to face communication for some students. Also, there will be positive effects on their writing ability, thus less attention to grammar accuracy.  Even this would let them explore and manipulate other technologies since they are digital natives. And that’s the other reason why I’m going to include synchronic tools in my EFL, because they are digital natives, they were born in the digital world. So, we need to benefit from that. We need to turn their overall knowledge about technology and narrow it till it is suited for their learning process.  Also, nowadays, our EFL students in Saudi Arabia are really high, advance learners, they prefer fast, random information, and so using these tools could be really beneficial. Definitely, our EFL students in Saudi Arabia will be much more excited in using synchronic tools to enhance their learning.

The only disadvantage that would happen is those digital immigrants’ teachers. They need to learn how to use technology, specifically synchronic tools in their EFL classrooms. They will be unfamiliar with these tools, so they need to be familiarized with in order to teach digital natives students that define and see the world as a high digital-tech that uses tech-coed in their daily life communication.