ABSTRACT

Throughout our collective 65 years as foreign language teachers and as members of a number of foreign language professional organizations, we have often gotten the impression that many foreign language teachers equate classroom success with quiet, serious, book-centered learning. However, an equal proportion of our colleagues believe the opposite is true, that is, they support interactive, engaged, student-centered, and most importantly, fun classroom lessons. Indeed, we all learned in our initial education methods courses that student motivation is a key factor in engaging students in learning. However, have you ever thought about the concept of fun as a teaching principle? What about a task type that underpins and facilitates fun as an ongoing motivational tool? We are talking about the use of technology as a classroom resource that has very sound theoretical justification in second language acquisition research, constructivism, cooperative learning, and sociocultural theory.