The use of internet assisted language learning in teaching writing for EFL student : a case of 3rd year commercial students in Bahrain secondary school

Abstract

Abstract : The Internet the center lane of the information super-highway is a worldwide computer network created more than two decades ago for researchers. The Internet is a living entity that changes very rapidly. Thus, it has impacted on virtually every aspect of society. It is natural that it has the potential to play a major role in foreign language learning and instruction, especially English being the lingua franca of the Internet with the presence of other languages being less well represented. The objective of this thesis is to determine whether the Internet can indeed contribute anything to modern language teaching, particularly to the instruction of English as a foreign language (EFL), and in what way it influences learning attitudes towards English in addition to assessing its effectiveness in EFL learners' writing proficiency. The research methodology was principally quantitative in design. The subjects were sixty female Bahraini students enrolled in a commercial secondary school and learning English as a foreign language (EFL). Subjects were divided into two groups of thirty students in each. The first group represented the experimental group which implemented the Internet program of the thesis as the EFL instruction in the form of Internet Assisted Language Learning (IALL) while the other group represented the control group which applied the traditional EFL instruction. The experimental group utilized the Web, e-mail and other aspects of the Internet in order to improve their writing proficiency and language attitude through a key pal e-mail exchange project arranged by the researcher between the experimental group's students and other EFL students and English native speakers in England, Poland and Australia. Both groups were given a pre and post-writing test in addition to a pre and post questionnaire as data collection methods. The quantitative test and questionnaire results demonstrated how the Internet and its synchronous and asynchronous facets were remarkably constructive through the findings which identified the progress of the writing proficiency and the learning attitudes of English as a foreign language of the experimental group. Unlike the control group, the experimental group's learning attitudes such as autonomy, authority and authenticity advanced and students have become active participants in learning and have been encouraged to be explorers and creators of language rather than passive recipients of it. Moreover, students stated how interesting and beneficial the course was and how it effectively influenced their language proficiency due to the implementation of the Internet project which they recommend to be utilized in the language courses in future.