La incidencia del sexo, del nivel de competencia en inglés y del grado de motivación en percepciones sobre aprendizaje a través de una aplicación en línea

Abstract

This article explores the influence of three variables, namely sex, level of competence in English and grade of motivation, on user perception of their progression in communicative skills and linguistic competences in English by means of the web-based program Tell Me More, and of the contribution of the activities it includes to their progression in English. The ultimate aim is to identify individual factors related to favorable perceptions of this platform as a web-based self-instruction program. Seventy-five teachers at the University of Malaga (Spain) took part in the study, which used a survey as a data-collection method. The Mann-Whitney U and the Kruskal-Wallis tests were applied to the data, and crosstabs and the Kendall correlation coefficient were calculated. Findings indicate that the variable sex influences the perception of progression in English with respect to three out of the five communicative skills investigated. Furthermore, findings point out that the lower the competence level in English, the higher the degree in which users consider that the activities have contributed towards their learning. Also, among the three factors studied, the degree of motivation stands out as the most influential, both for the perception of improvement in communicative skills and linguistic competences and for the favorable consideration of the contribution of the activities to the learning of English. These findings, together with the verification that the lower the competence level in English, the higher the motivation that Tell Me More generates, lead to conclude that it is an English learning platform more suitable for elementary students than for those with a B1 level or above according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages.