Afterword

Without doubt, the digital technology allows SLA learners the best learning environment and at the same time thrusts its teachers the most challenging task in the history. The rich L2 language environment offers learners “the third space” in which real communication is possible to occur. Tools like YouTube and Podcast make task/problem-based output of L2 more attractive to learners. But to digital immigrant teachers like me, especially those who regard themselves as the “master of knowledge”, teaching digital natives is a job to invite embarrassment and nervousness. As a digital immigrant, I have fear to touch the digital technology. And what’s worse, I escaped to face the problem.

Through this course, I saw how far I fell behind this society and realized how important it is for a ESL teacher to face the reality and catch up with the step.

Staggering to finish to tasks for the class, I myself began to build up my own digital literacies, from knowing and using the tools, to making some trail digital works, from guessing the owner/writer of the website to figuring out the reliability, from download the software to handing on them. I was pushed to be involved in the huge tornado.

This course pushed me to see a big picture of digital reading and writing, or digital literacies in both theoretical and practical sense. I appreciate the instructor’s guidance and the design of the tasks. The reading materials for this course lead me to see skeleton of the big whole. Whenever I lost myself in the ocean of technology and information, the reading materials and the instructors comments allowed me to see something solid and all of a sudden, figuring out my position (by the way, I am a holistic learner).

Further from here, I probed for a new direction in my research, which I never dared to give a single glimpse. Out of my own experiences, I realized the significance of the design of the task in the pedagogy of L2 teaching. This is going to be the focus of my later research.

Also there are some questions remained that will engage more of my effort. I still have difficulty in seeing the overlapping relationship among L1 digital literacies, L2 digital literacy and L2 digital literacies.