Review on Learner to Teacher: EFL Student Teachers’ Perceptions on Internet-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching
Introduction
Over the last decades of information age, the Internet has become an important part of modern education. According to Abdallah (2007), applying the Internet into English language teaching process is uful for teachers to help students develop language learning skills. Celik (2013) also regards Internet-bad facility in classroom as a significant tool in teaching procedure, especially in foreign language teaching. Recent years, a number of studies, opinions and articles have been put forward to this topic of Internet and English language teaching. Even though the rearches have been very uful to English teachers and students, some of their instructions and findings are not very practical and comprehensive in modern English teaching process. Considering such situation, this paper examines Kuo’s view on the perceptions for English teachers and EFL students who u Internet during their teaching or learning procedure in his article Learner to Teacher: EFL St
udent Teachers’ Perceptions on Internet-Assisted Language Learning and Teaching. In order to delivery my review completely, a summary to Kuo’s article will be provided at first. And then, this paper will discuss my review on the article by analyzing its content, findings and discussions. At the end of paper, a brief conclusion will be prented.
Summary
According to Kuo(2008), the rapid development of Internet and computer promotes educators to integrate internet-bad technology into classroom, becau it can create a lf-governed and cooperative learning circumstance for EFL students. With the help of the Internet, they can have access to practice their cond language skills. Even though the Internet and computers have bought great changes to the EFL education, how to take advantage of the new inventions is an unttled issue in language teaching process. Kuo finds that this brings controversial questions, such as “can every student benefit from this innovation” or “Is there any problem they encounter when they u Internet-bad facility?” The answers to the questions will help educators to define what kind of role should Internet-assisted technology plays in current EFL instructions.
In order to find out opinions of Taiwan ELF student teachers on their experience when apply the Internet to the learning and teaching procedure, Kuo conducted a rearch at Wezao Ursuline College in Taiwan. In the rearch, 101 nior student teachers who aged from 21 to 29 and on EFL cours were lected as samples. During this rearch, 101 questionnaires were nt out and 77 of them were returned. Kuo also ud Likert scale which ranges from Strongly Disagree(4) to Strongly Agree (1) to evaluate students and teachers respons. In order to make the survey results more clear, all data are reported in numbers and percentages. He also prented three table charts to summarize the findings in the rearch.
The first table illustrates the EFL student teachers’ experience on Internet-bad English learning. 81.8% of the participants who returned the questionnaire agree or strongly agree that the Internet provide them with positive experience to promote English language skills; 83.1%indicated that more attention was paid to English language class
which ba on Internet; 84% teachers thought they have developed lf-guided learning habit through Internet. In the article, Kuo discusd that technological education has made an elementary success in guiding students to recognize the significance of the Internet and computers. He also concluded that Internet-bad instruction not only create lf-guided learning environment but also catch student’s attention to learning language.
The cond table given by Kuo shows the EFL student teachers’ personal belief on functions of Internet-assisted language instruction. Figures from this table indicate that the majority of tho teachers (92.2%) confirm that they can get abundant learning environment from the Internet; 93.5% of them asrt that internet is a helpful tool by assisting teaching process in the future; moreover, ESL or ELF online resources are found uful for EFL student teachers’ teaching. By analyzing the data, Kuo believes that EFL student teachers learned the importance of Internet-assisted language instruction and thought it is a helpful instrument to promote English language teaching quality in the future.
Kuo’s last table makes teachers’ personal attitude on future Internet-bad language teaching class. As shown in this table, 80.5% participants said that they are willing to apply Internet materials in their future English classroom and introduce online activities to the students. However, there are only 72.2% thought that they are confident for taking advantage of the Internet and operating computers in their real teaching classroom. 88.3% EFL student teachers felt that specific computer operating training cours are needed to promote their abilities and 80.5% recognized that they have to learn how to combine Internet resources with textbooks in the classroom circumstance. From the data, Kuo claimed that most EFL student teachers are lack of experience to u computer in the future English language teaching classroom.
In the last ction of Kuo’s article, it has been concluded that an innovation of EFL instruction are going to be developed by integrating traditional teaching method and modern Internet-bad facilities. He also pointed out that with the help of technology training cours EFL students would have access to specific instruction ud to satisfy their needs by joining various online interaction activities. Regarding the results of Kuo’s r
earch, many EFL student teachers are not certain whether they have the ability to apply technology into their future English taught classroom, even though the majority of them are happy with their experience instructed by the Internet during learning process. Therefore, Kuo suggesting in the end of his article, EFL directors need to provide teachers with trainings to develop ability on building right perceptions of using the Internet and computers in the future.
