Kommunikationsmittel und Medien im Fremdsprachenunterricht

Continuous technological development affects other possible areas of human activity, including the educational process. Current mass media such as press, radio, television, social networks, as well as new information and communication technologies and devices such as computers, tablets, mobile phones and interactive whiteboards are very often used in the educational process. Computer technology provides new and effective learning opportunities in the form of a variety of didactic electronic learning materials, interactive educational programs and applications that not only modernize lessons but also make them more illustrative and interesting. New technologies have also significantly changed teaching methods. All these facilities provide educators with a suitable environment to make their teaching more interesting, modern and efficient. These facilities allow students to learn any time outside school hours and at home. Using new media for language learning brings many advantages, but also several disadvantages. On the one hand, it is possible to present the curriculum more clearly, which results in students acquiring the content of the curriculum more quickly and efficiently. On the other hand, the design and creation of teaching material, the planning and organization of lessons require a lot of time from the teacher, as well as high-quality media and information-communication competences. The use of media in foreign language teaching has also changed the roles of teacher and student. Today’s teaching focuses on the student as an active part of the teaching process and not just as an object of teaching. Now, the teacher becomes the driving element of the lesson management. Different didactics summarize the concept of media differently. Some didactics perceive the medium as a purely electronic tool for technical education, while others include printed material such as pictures, graphics, but also visualizations and animations. In this article we would like to clarify the function of media in education, to explain some important concepts such as “media competence”, “blended learning” or “e-learning”. We will also summarize the advantages of using different media in the educational process as well as some of their functions. Various teaching programs and interactive didactic applications are currently used in pedagogical practice, which can also be used in foreign language teaching. Therefore, we will also focus on brief characteristics of some of them; describe their possibilities and ways of usage in education. We also provide a specific example of the appearance of an interactive German language lesson developed in Hot Potatoes. The example was created by a German language student at a computer science lesson in collaboration with a teacher. Tasks, such as this one, are used by the authors in the class and they are proved in practice.