Using Multimedia in the Foreign Language Classroom | Page 17

rather than they learn what the answers to questions are. As students are asked to type
their questions on the computer, they can collaborate concerning what to write and
how to write it correctly. The activity is motivating as students write something they
themselves have thought of and the computer facilitates a process approach to writing
(see 1. 3. 2 above) as it gives them the chance to write, revise and re-write the
questions till they think these are written appropriately. A spell-checker can be used
as a final step for the correction of surface mistakes making students realize that they
need not bother for such matters from the beginning but, rather, to give priority to the
formulation of ideas.
3.3.2 While-reading activities
These as Wallace (1992) stresses, aim at helping the students practice different
approaches to texts such as to read for gist (skimming), to read for detail (scanning) or
to read for a fuller understanding (intensive reading), according to their purpose and
to develop lower order skills such as cultivation of vocabulary, and linguistic
structures. Thus:
Activity 2 (see appendix IV, p. ix) is a text reconstruction activity which asks
students to put the jumbled paragraphs of a text in the correct order. The activity is
done with the help of the word processor and practises skimming as students need to
find cues that help them arrange the text according to the chronological order in which
the events took place. As it was stressed above (see 1. 3. 2), the use of the word
processor allows students to experiment with their choices without being afraid that
what they choose to do is not reversible. Moreover, during the process of
reconstruction, the text is always available on screen and students have the chance to
see it as a whole, something which is not feasible if the activity is done on paper.
Activity 3 (see appendix IV, p. ix) asks students to skim the text again in order
to find questions to their answers. In this way, the students read the text with a
purpose which they themselves have created and they are given the chance to confirm
or reject the hypotheses they had made earlier. Similar to what happened in activity 1,
students are encouraged to adopt a process approach to writing as they can type and
re-type their answers till they believe they are written appropriately. It is considered
that some students might not find answers to some of their questions. In this way they
can realize that not all questions can find answers in a single text, something which,
with the teacher’s encouragement and help, can lead them at a later stage to search the

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