2 - Sociocollaborative language learning in Bulgaria

Summary

New technologies and access to them have brought a whirlwind increase in the number of available designs for learning. Such development has brought to the education sector innumerable possibilities for rethinking language and literacy and, in turn, redesigning instruction (New London Group, 1996). Consideration of potential redesigns, however, must be guided by two interdependent considerations: first, current, best instructional theory and practice; second, careful consideration of the situational variables that pertain to contexts of technology use. This chapter discusses the redesign of an English as a foreign language (EFL) curriculum at the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Central to the rethinking and redevelopment of the resulting technologies-based curriculum was careful consideration of (1) current best language teaching practice; and (2) technologies that could be called into service of such activity.

Background

The development and implementation processes of the literatureand technologies-based curriculum in Bulgaria enjoyed an opportunity unique to former Communist-bloc countries; that is, because of imposed isolation of the academic community up until democratization in 1989, foreign language instructional practices were not influenced by the major rethinking and restructuring experienced by the international language teaching community from the 1960s to the 1980s. Consequently, up to the time of Bulgaria's reopened communications with the rest of the world, EFL curricula followed fairly closely the traditional British model, one that emphasized the study of philology, literary canon, and language appreciation.