TOPICS IN TECHNOLOGY ENHANCED LANGUAGE LEARNING

At the time of writing this preface, I have just recently returned from a 2.5-week trip to Turkiye as a visiting scholar and English Language Specialist. During my time in Turkiye, I had the great fortune to meet and work with students and faculty from English language teaching programs at 􀃯ve different universities around the country. My visit mainly consisted of facilitating various pedagogy workshops to pre-service teachers. These hours-long workshops ranged in topics from designing reading activities, to using authentic materials, to conducting peer observations, just to name a few. Although the locales and workshop topics were wide-ranging, the method of delivery had one aspect in common: the nearly 400 participants at these workshops used their smartphones to access the materials and complete the hands-on activities. As such, students' access to and understanding of digital technology, as well as my own, was essential for offering an engaging, interactive, and student-centered workshop experience that re􀃰ected best practices in the 􀃯eld of English language teaching. Without this access and understanding, students' learning and my own teaching surely would have suffered. What this experience has reemphasized for me is the importance and 􀃰exibility of technology as a learning and teaching tool in language teaching, and perhaps even more so in the English as a foreign language context. This experience has made it crystal clear for me why we need this book.