MINISTRY OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING HUE UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES ------------ NGUYEN ANH NHI AN INVESTIGATION INTO EFL STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF USING ONLINE MATERIALS FOR SELF STUDY AT HUE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES MA THESIS IN THEORY AND METHODOLOGY OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE TEACHING CODE: 60. TRUONG VIEN HUE, 2016 i BỘ GIÁO DỤC VÀ ĐÀO TẠO ĐẠI HỌC HUẾ TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ -------- NGUYỄN ANH NHI NGHI N CỨU VỀ NH N THỨC CỦA INH VI N TIẾNG ANH TRONG VI C DỤNG TÀI NGUY N TR C TUYẾN ĐỂ T HỌC T P TẠI TRƯỜNG ĐẠI HỌC NGOẠI NGỮ HUẾ LU N VĂN THẠC Ĩ LÝ LU N VÀ PHƯƠNG PHÁP DẠY HỌC BỘ MÔN TIẾNG ANH MÃ Ố: 60.11 NGƯỜI HƯỚNG DẪN KHOA HỌC: PGS.TS TRƯƠNG VIÊN HUẾ, 2016 ii STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP The work contained in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree or diploma in any university. I certify that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, my thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the thesis itself. Nguyen Anh Nhi 19 December, 2016.
iii ABSTRACT Online materials are now popular students all around the world, especially to EFL learners. This paper aims to investigate the perception of using online materials to self-study English of first and second year EFL students at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. To collect the data, questionnaires were administered to 120 students and 12 students were interviewed to seek for more information which is lacked from the questionnaire. The questionnaire included the basic information and 42 statements about students’ ideas about using online materials in improving English skills.
42 items of the questionnaire were designed based on Likert five – scale. Interview questions were to identify their further general perceptions toward online materials and EFL self-study. The main findings of the study include (1) students’ perceptions toward using online materials in learning English, (2) the reality of using online materials, (3) the advantages and problems in using online materials for self-study of first and second year EFL students at Hue University College of Foreign Languages. In light of the findings, some pedagogical implications for both EFL students and teachers and were made in order to maximize the advantages and improve the problems which EFL students have to encounter frequency in English learning process.
iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this opportunity to express my deep gratitude to those people who provided valuable advice and enthusiastic helped me during the time I worked on this thesis. I would like to express my gratitude to all the lectures of the TESOL graduate program at Hue University College of Foreign Languages for their dedication and helpful instruction during the course from year of 2014 to 2016. I would like to express my genuine appreciation and grateful thanks to my supervisor, Associate Professor Dr. Truong Vien, who gave me practical guidance, comforting words and took a chance on me, introducing me to this research area.
Under his supervision, I became more independent, raised my sense of initiative and developed my thinking to the research. I would like to express my thanks to Dr. Nguyen Quang Ngoan and Associate Professor Dr. Ho Thi Kieu Oanh, my examiners as well as other members in Examination Board who helped me to find out the shortages in my thesis and gave me some suggestions to adjust the thesis.
Besides, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to my classmates in Master program who are all friendly and helpful in during time of study as so as the time of doing this research study. Last but not least, my sincerely thanks to my family and my friends whose support has been especially important to the success of my educational endeavors. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page STATEMENT OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP. v TABLE OF CONTENTS.
vi LIST OF TABLES. ix LIST OF CHARTS. x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS. Aims of the research.
The significance of the study. Organization of the thesis. LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND. What is technology?.
Technology in language learning .2 Advantages of using online materials in self-learning. Activities for self-study.13 vi CHAPTER III. Background of research subjects. Interview – Interview questions.
Procedures of data collection. Piloting the questionnaire. Administering the questionnaire. Conducting the interview.
FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION. Findings related to Research question 1: “What are the students’ perceptions of using online materials for EFL self-study at HUCFL?”. Results from questionnaire. Necessity for using online materials to self-study (Sub-Cluster 1).
Important online materials for self-study (Sub-Cluster 2). Results from interview. Students’ perception of using online materials for EFL self-study. Findings related to research question 2: “How are online materials used by EFL students for their self-study?”.
Results from the questionnaire. Online resources I often use to self-study (Sub-Cluster 3). Resources of online materials which students often use (Sub-Cluster 3). Results from the interview.
What sources of online materials do you like most?. How and how often do you use online materials to self-study?. What individual tools do you often use to have access to online materials?. Findings related to Research question 3: “What are advantages and problems of using online materials for EFL self-study by the students at HUCFL?”.
Results from the questionnaire. Advantages of using online materials (Sub-Cluster 5). Problems of using online materials (Sub-Cluster 6). Results from interview.
Advantages of using online materials. Problems of using online materials. Discussions related to Research question 1. Discussion related to Research question 2.
Discussion related to Research question 3. Summary of the findings. Findings related to Research question 1: Students’ perceptions of using online materials for EFL self-study. Findings related to Research question 2: Online materials used by EFL students for their self-study.
Findings related to Research question 3: Advantages and problems of using online materials for EFL self-study. Implications for EFL teachers and administers. Implications for the students. Suggestions for further research.
56 viii LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1: Profile of the participants .2: Clusters, Sub-Clusters, and their items in the questionnaire .1: Cronbach’s Alpha of the questionnaire .2: Means score of Sub-Cluster 1 .3: One Sample T-test of Sub-Cluster 1 .4: Level of the necessity of online materials .5: Mean of Sub-Cluster 2 .6: One Sample T-test of Sub-Cluster 2 .7: Important online materials for self-study English .8: Mean of Sub-Cluster 3 .9: One Sample T-test of Sub-Cluster 3 .10: Online materials which students often use to self-study English .11: Mean of Sub-Cluster 5 .12: Mean of each item in Sub-Cluster 5 .13: Means of Sub-Cluster 6. 37 ix LIST OF CHARTS Chart 4.1: Web opens a whole new avenue to learn English.2: Internet is required in using these materials.3: Wide ranges of online materials are available .4: Network-based learning helps students improve knowledge.5: Students learnt a lot from online materials .6: Confusing level when finding specific information on the Internet .7: Internet is important in using online materials.8: Authenticity of online materials .9: Lacking of ability on searching and interacting on the Internet .10: Lacking of proficiency in the English language affects using online materials. 36 x LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS CALL : Computer-Assisted Language Learning EFL : English as a Foreign Language HUCFL : Hue University College of Foreign Languages xi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Chapter I - Introduction includes five sections: (1) the rationale of conducting the study, (2) aims of the study, (3) topic and research questions, (4) the significance of the study, and (5) the organization of research study. Rationale In today’s global world, the importance of English cannot be denied and ignored since English is the most common language spoken everywhere.
With the help of developing technology, English has been playing a major role in many sectors including Medicine, Engineering, and Education and so on. Therefore, English is more and more popular all over the world. It becomes a bridge to connect people from all countries together. More importantly, English affects strongly learning and teaching process.
So, the urgent necessity in teaching and learning English now is finding out suitable ways to transmit and gain knowledge. Besides, we are now living in a high affected information technology world and technology, no doubt, plays an important role in today’s human society development (Bassma, B. Combination in English language learning and technology is necessary and completely reasonable. Technology helps people to communicate and interact with each other more easily so they are applied in many aspects of life, especially in teaching and learning language and they can deliver the pedagogical support students need.
New technologies, or new uses of existing technologies, continue to provide unique opportunities for language learning (Robert G. 2005) and these technologies provided a huge number of online resources for EFL self-study. You are using Internet, it means that you are taking benefit from nowadays technology. The increasing uses of Web 2.0 (second generation of web technologies such as social networks, blogs, wikis grooves, RSS, and podcasts…) claim for new age in 1 teaching and learning English will be different from traditional approaches.0 allows users who have common interests and concerns to meet, share ideas, experience or work together in a very convenient way-online (Brown & Adler, 2008; Maloney, 2007; Mason, R.
Several studies show how Internet tools can improve the learning experience by enabling users to interact, cooperate, participate, share information, and so. In this research, the researcher wants to explore the perceptions of EFL students on using online resources for self-study. Getting ideas and inspiration from previous researchers, the researcher wants to carry out a study on perception and reality of using online materials to self-study English at Hue University College of Foreign Languages, which has a good learning environment with high quality computer system, the Internet connection WIFI. These are the reasons why the researcher has chosen this field as a research area.
Both advantages and problems of online materials are focused on to find out if these online materials are really useful for learning English and how to deal with the problems to maximize the benefits and minimize the bad effects of these sources in learning English. Aims of the research This research aims to investigate the perceptions of EFL students at HUCFL toward using online materials, the reality of using these resources for self-study and give some recommendations to encourage and motivate students to study English skills via available sources on the Internet by themselves. Another aim of this study is inspiring language teachers to give right direction for their students in using online materials in effective ways to benefit from the Internet in EFL self-study. Concretely, this research is carried out to (1) explore the students’ perceptions of using online materials for EFL self-study, (2) show out the reality of using online materials of EFL students and (3) identify advantages, problems on English self- study to EFL students at HUCFL.
Research questions In this research paper, these research questions are focused on: 1- What are the students’ perceptions of using online materials for EFL self-study at HUCFL? 2- How are online materials used by EFL students for their self-study? 3- What are advantages and problems of using online materials for EFL self-study by the students at HUCFL? 1. The significance of the study This study indicates the reality of self-study English of EFL students at Hue University College of Foreign Languages and gives some contributions to encourage and motivate the EFL students to practice English themselves via online materials. This study inspires first year and second year students of HUCFL to consider technological devices as friendly tools to learn English.