This is the “Technology Use” part of the survey I posted earlier in this blog. I would like to mention, in case you did not read the previous post, that survey was conducted for a Forum by contribution of 594 students and the help of colleagues from 12 different English Preparatory Schools of both private and state universities in Turkey. You may find the list of universities below.
Here are the questions and my comments. There are five answers “Never True, Rarely True, Sometimes True, Mostly True, Always True”. Mostly and Always True will be considered as “Yes” and I will Comment accordingly. Data below is processed by SPSS.
Majority of our students like to spend or create time to be with computers or smart phones. I had no doubt about that but the question is “are they using it to entertain or to do something to improve their language?” and that question takes us to the next statement (2). What we can do as teachers is to guide students to use computer to assist their learning process. I am not trying to say that they must go and learn “about” English. Teachers must direct or lead them to opportunities that will make them practice the language even when they are playing PC games. Prep. Students say they try to operate their devices in English whereas they are not really into using forum, comment or download web sites in English. I know and try to be one of the people who use English forums to find an answer to my problems as this is on a global scale rather than local and includes many different solutions. What’s interesting in the results of Statement 5, they do know that English will help them reach more info and the rate is really high (68%). But despite this fact they don’t seem to prefer forums in English.
Computer is a natural interaction device, natural because people interact and make mistakes but not scored or judged afterwards just like a child learning. The last statement tells us that students are highly aware of the importance of devices in learning English, if that is the case why should not we integrate computers, tablets, smartphones or any other device into our lessons. There has been a debate in one of the blogs about the use of smartphones in class and it is surprising to see that some teachers object the idea of using it but as I saw the main concern is the abuse of them which I believe is the same for any kind of materials including course books.
What I always say is that virtual world should be used to create opportunities to use the language in real time environment rather than putting computer in teacher’s place when he is there.
Universities that contributed to the survey.
emrah akkurt 