Teachers and Foreign Language Learners’ Perspectives on the Use of ICT

Abstract

Significant efforts are exerted in the European Higher Education Area for the dissemination of information and communications technology in a way to address to motivation and cognitive domains. A number of students in higher education institutions learn a foreign language since universities and foreign language teaching are interwoven closely. This study is aimed at revealing which information and communication technologies foreign language learners prefer, how they make use of them, the prevalence of the technologies among students. For this purpose, a questionnaire concerning the use ICT was performed for 139 students. So as to develop a deeper understanding of the use of ICT and to shape the questionnaire before we apply, a focus group interview was administered to 8 students. The results of the study showed both teachers and students benefit from ICT in different ways. Translation and dictionary are found to be the most commonly utilized Web pages during foreign language learning. Students frequently consider the Web useful in their foreign language learning process, yet also regard it as a distraction and unreliable source of information. More than one-third of the participants also noted that ICT takes too much time.