Task 2: Article Review

Title     : Teachers’ Stances on Cell Phones in the ESL Classroom: Toward a “Theoretical”
                Framework              
               http://teslcanadajournal.ca/index.php/tesl/article/viewFile/1177/997

Journal : Volume 31, Issue 2, 2014

Author : Jeff Brown

              He holds an MA and a PhD in philosophy and a postgraduate certificate in TESL.
              He teaches in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Humber College in      

              Toronto.

            This article is a concept article. The main idea of this article is the language teachers’ attitude towards the usage of cell phone in the language lesson. Based on the article, most of the teachers are digital immigrants while the students are digital natives (Brown, 2014).  Hence, many stances rise up  regarding this matter. For instance, Jarvis and Achilleos (2013) emphasize on the use of cell phones in second language learning, outside of the classroom. Moreover, they support the transformation of acronym from CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning) into MALU (Mobile Assisted Language Learning). Therefore, there are various attitudes towards cell phone use in the classroom. There are 2 absolutist approaches that are strictly contrasting, which are prohibitionism and permissivism. The prohibitionists ban the use of cell phones during the language lesson because it is viewed as a disruption and impairment to learning. In contrast, permissivists grip and embolden the use of cell phones in the classroom because they may be convinced that the students, who are the digital natives, would boost up their potential as they are permitted to include the technology into the learning process. These two attitudes stand at the end of each pole, either strictly forbid or highly encourage the students to use cell phones in ESL classroom. On the other hand, in between of these 2 absolutist approaches, there are several other stances concerning the use of cell phone in ESL learning. They are critical exceptionalism, soft prohibitionism, moderate paternalisim, ostrichism, utilirianism, moderate permissivism and  critical exclusionism. Among the variety of stances, the one that I think most relatable and suitable to be used during my practicum session is moderate paternalism. This stance believes that the use of cell phone should be controlled to some degree and teacher should be able to quickly sense the appropriately intervene in order to lead the learning to achieve the classroom objectives. Considering my students, they are quite advanced with the use of cell phone and they would find it astonishing whenever I tried to instill a little bit of technology in the ESL classroom. However, in order to garner the learning objectives, the teacher should always be aware and spontaneous in order to react intelligently to any upcoming situation. 

            This article does interest me, especially throughout its very own title, which connects cell phone and language classroom. During my years of schooling, I had never encountered a situation whereby my teacher asked us to take out our cell phones and utilize it in the language classroom. Instead, we were asked to never bring cell phone to the classroom, as if it were the biggest crime in the act of humanity. Hence, the approaches that are up to certain degrees of encouraging and prohibiting cell phone use in the ESL classroom really appeal to me. The varieties of degrees are permissivism, critical exclusionism, moderate permissivism, utilitarianism, ostricism, moderate paternalism, soft prohibitionism, critical exceptionalism and prohibitionism. Nevertheless, I could not bring myself to agree that the article was soundly fashioned. Since this is a concept article, there is no respondents interviewed or researched. Hence, the results or data are just basically based on the previous theories or framework that were constructed by the preceding researchers. However, personally, I would think that this article would contribute more if it were to be a research article, in which there are respondents encompassed. This could be a great field to be studied, whereby a group of ESL teachers are interviewed and referred regarding their views and stands towards the use of cell phones in their ESL classroom. By acquiring this element, the readers could view the current stands of the educators, whether they think cell phone is a helping hand or the ominous object to be used in ESL classroom. On the other hand, undeniably, this article could convey a refreshed view in the teaching and learning of ESL, since the usage of cell phones in Malaysian ESL classroom could be considered as new and still very novel. Many teachers or educators are still in doubt, whether to allow the use of cell phones in ESL classroom or not. Going through my own practicum journey, some of the experienced teachers are dubious to use cell phone in ESL classroom because they are alarmed and afraid  that the students might get their attention strayed away due to the inclusion of cell phone in the ESL classroom. Hence, the varieties of framework provided by this article could broaden up the teachers’ way of looking at this matter and therefore, might inject the innovative teaching method and assist ESL learning. Henceforth, this article truly leaves a great implication in the teaching and learning of ESL in Malaysian context.