Factors Affecting Pre-service TESOL Teachers’ Attitudes towards Using CD-ROM Dictionary

Abstract

Rapid technological advances in communication technologies and computational power are altering the nature ofknowledge, skills, talents and the know-how of individuals. A CD-ROM dictionary is an interesting and effectiveteaching tool, which captures pre-service teachers’ interest and does much more than just translates especially withthe availability of a variety of resources to support language learning and teaching. This research reports on thestudy undertaken to determine whether some factors (gender and year of study) affect pre-service TESOL teachers’attitudes towards using CD-ROM dictionaries. The theoretical framework for the study is drawn from Diffusion ofinnovations’ theory by Rogers (1995) and TAM model by Davis (1986; 1989). A modified questionnaire isemployed to obtain the necessary information on pre-service TESOL teachers’ backgrounds, their attitudes towardsusing CD-ROM dictionaries, and certain factors. A total of (80) pre-service TESOL teacher at a Malaysian highereducational institution was purposively selected for the quantitative data. The findings exhibit that the respondents’gender does not affect their attitudes towards using CD-ROM dictionaries. However, a significant difference isrevealed, through employing one-way analysis of group variance (ANOVA), in the mean scores of pre-serviceTESOL teachers’ attitudes among the first, second and third year. Finally, it is concluded that the CD-ROMdictionary is a way of encoding all relevant information associated with lexical entries in a manner easily accessibleto users.