Browsing by Subject "Internet (Computer network.)"

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Open Access
A survey of present and potential uses of internet resources in Turkish universities for ELT purposes
(1999) Çele, Filiz
The Internet is a place for people all over the world to meet, communicate, and share ideas and experiences with friends or colleagues. Internet resources such as e-mail, listservs, and World Wide Web (WWW) have been used by many foreign language educators and students in order to improve foreign language learning and teaching. The Internet allows language educators and students to make use of a vast amount of authentic materials on the WWW, and to join listservs to discuss and exchange their ideas and experiences with their colleagues all over the world. The Internet is a recent addition to Turkish Universities and the number of computers connected to the Internet in these universities is notably increasing. However, there are limited studies on how these resources are being used in these universities. The purpose of this survey study is to investigate whether the use of Internet resources such as WWW, e-mail, listservs, and Internet chat groups is a viable option in Turkish universities for ELT purposes. In order to answer this question this study focuses on the degree of familiarity and attitudes of teachers and administrators to the Internet, how the Internet is being used in Turkish universities for instructional purposes and the most problematic technical, economic and pedagogical issues in implementing the Internet in English language courses. This study was conducted at eleven state and six private universities which have Preparatory Schools of English. Three ELT departments of these universities were also included in this study. The subjects of this study were administrators and teachers at these universities. Ten teachers and the administrator of each department were surveyed, with a total of 156 respondents. The data were gathered through questionnaires and analysed through both quantitative and qualitative means. According to the results from the teachers and administrators, it was found that most of the administrators and teachers have computers and connection to the Internet in their institutions, but the use of Internet resources in English courses is low. Moreover it is found that the most problematic issue in Internet use is buying adequate numbers of computers and training teachers to guide students in using computers and the Internet. However, they think that most of the Internet resources are beneficial to English language learning and teaching, and they are most interested in using the WWW, and e-mail in their courses. These results indicate that use of Internet resources for ELT purposes is a viable option in Turkish universities in the near future when schools are provided with enough computers and teachers are trained to use these resources in English language courses.