The Study Of PPT Courseware In Foreign Language Learning

Computer has penetrated in almost every aspect of daily life. The field in foreignlanguage learning and teaching is a case in particular. PowerPoint courseware becomescommon assistance in the foreign language learning and teaching activity. Traditionally,cramming teaching method with the traditional blackboard is the preferable choice bymost of the teachers when delivering the speech. The traditional learning way ofpreviewing the new knowledge and having the classes in a passive way give way to thehabit of reading the textbooks and waiting for the lectures from the professors. Theabsolute constant and passive input from professors is not satisfactory and efficient inforeign language learning, especially at the learning stage of the postgraduate level.The collected courseware has naturally become the mirror of the extent to which the postgraduates has understood the postgraduate course book. The authoress hascollected301slides in the process of learning, teaching, and participating thepostgraduate classroom activity. The study aim at finding the advantages anddisadvantages of the collected PPT courseware based on input theory and the relatedstudies both at home and abroad. As a matter of fact, the courseware created by thepostgraduates are the natural overflow of the thoughts and after-reading reaction or eventhe reorganization of the original textbook and original material. The collected coursewares are from the postgraduates in school of foreign languages, Yan’an University.Those postgraduates share the same major–foreign linguistics and applied linguistics，but they belong to three different research branches: translation, modern linguistics, andmodern foreign language teaching. The courseware are from different courses:psychology of language, evaluating second language education, approaches and methodsin language teaching, principles of language learning and teaching, cognitive linguistics,testing, school of linguistics, translation, applied linguistics research methods and thesiswriting, understanding research in second language learning, discourse analysis, secondlanguage acquisition, and sociolinguistics of language.The paper makes an elaborate analysis of the collected courseware based on thetheory of comprehensible output and comprehensible input. It is hoped that the majorfindings can shed some light on the later coming postgraduates when modifying andsimplifying the complicated content from the postgraduate course book in a systematicand understandable way.The result of data analysis manifests that PPT courseware has the striking featuresof being timesaving, direct, and easy to be understood. The pure text is the mostfrequently used modality. The picture modality follows. On the contrary, thosepostgraduates prefer the audio and video modalities. Most of the collected PPT hassimplified the complicated content in the course book. But there still exists severalproblems due to the limitations in computer skills and PPT production techniques: poorpage layout, single presentation way and too much pure text.One thing should be noted is that, there are still some limitations about the study.The guinea pigs in the study are limited. Thus, the research questions need furtherdiscussion and research.