Exploring secondary school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers' attitudes to and perceptions of using the internet in English language teachi

Doctoral Thesis / Dissertation from the year 2014 in the subject English - Pedagogy, Didactics, Literature Studies, grade: -, Université d'Abomey-Calavi, course: Didactics - EFL, language: English, abstract: As one of the technologies of information and communication, the Internet has been, for some years now, the topic of much interest within the educational community. Ways of using the Internet as a medium to deliver instructional materials and to access digital libraries are reshaping education in general and language instruction in particular. This exploratory study has attempted to find out the attitudes and perceptions of secondary school English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers towards the use of the internet in English Teaching in Benin. It has also set out to investigate the possible impediments for such integration in the classrooms. In this line, a review of the existing literature related to Computer-Assisted Language Learning and the internet uses and benefits for Education has been presented. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been employed to collect data on the field. A questionnaire was distributed to 500 secondary school EFL teachers during the 2012-2013 school year. The return rate of this questionnaire was 99% (N=495). This stage was followed by interviews with a random sample of 40 teachers. The results from both the quantitative and qualitative instruments of research indicated that the participants had rarely used the Internet, particularly for instructional purposes. Indeed, they reported more use of the Internet for personal than for instructional purposes. Participants had high levels of Internet use in mainstream Internet services such as e-mail and the Web. While they had positive perceptions of the use of the Internet as a pedagogical tool, they had relatively limited levels of access to and expertise with computers and the Internet. Positive correlations existed between teachers' level of use of the Internet and five independent variables, including computer and Internet expertise, place of access to the Internet, perceptions of the Internet, computer experience, and Internet experience. Multiple regression analysis indicated that only expertise, place of access, and Internet experience had a significant predictive value of teachers' use of the Internet. The results also indicated that 39% of the variance in Internet use was explained by the independent variables included in this study. To increase Internet use, secondary school EFL teachers need to be given more Internet training. In-service training needs to be a top priority, with a primary focus on using the Internet as a tool for teaching and learning. [...]