ICT Integration Trends in EFL (English as Foreign Language)

Classrooms

Sitti Hadijah, Shalawati

English Education Department, Universitas Islam Riau, Pekanbaru, Indonesia

Keywords:

ICT, EFL Classrooms, Smartphone

Abstract:

Since the integration of ICT in education has been widely implemented in the classrooms, hence this study

is focused on studying the ICT trends in English as Foreign Language Classrooms and EFL students’

perspectives to the ICT integration. This study worked on descriptive research design by applying both

quantitative and qualitative methods. Thirty-three undergraduate students in English Department of Education

Faculty were involved, they were voluntary invited to ﬁll out online questionnaire for this research purposes.

The ﬁndings reveal that smartphone is the most preferable devise used by the students, they conveyed that

Smartphone’s simplicity and portability are two main reasons for using it to support their learning experiences.

In addition, the students aware that the integration of technology in English language teaching brings good

values to improve their English skills. They also added that the teacher’s roles are interchangeable, no matter

how advance the technology is, the teacher’s existence in the class is still highly required. However, the

students said that teachers need to be creative in deploying the technology devices because the core point

of utilizing technology devices in learning is not simply about using the technology as media, but it should

empower the students to have better learning experiences and skills.

1 INTRODUCTION

Integration of Information and Communication

Technology has been implemented by numerous

teachers in their teaching and learning contexts,

(Yogi, 2013; Ganapathy, 2015; Zhang and Zhang,

2015; Nicolas and El-Aly, 2018). This condition

depicts that ICT has essential contributions towards

the teaching and learning process as teachers can

employ it to enhance their students’ performances.

The ICT can also be a tool to motivate students in

their learning experiences because its integration can

beneﬁt them through different learning experiences,

(Yogi, 2013).

In 1960s, computers were introduced in language

learning context through CALL (Computer Assisted

Language Learning) which present beneﬁts for both

language learners and teachers in teaching and

learning process, (Al-Mahrooqi & Troudi, 2014).

Afterwards, in 1990, the appearance of internet in

education brought signiﬁcant change in language

education, such as transforming textbooks into

e-books, face-to-face to online or blended learning,

paper-based exam to online-based exam, and also

reducing some barriers about time and space, (Farooq

and Soomro, 2018).

In technology era nowadays, teachers in EFL

classrooms are highly required to be skillful with

“cutting edge” technology in order to facilitate

their students with better learning experiences which

will simultaneously affect their English proﬁciency.

However, the use of technology in the classrooms

is not an easy way to engage into reality as some

constraints can be encountered by both teachers

and students, for example; paucity skill of ICT,

ﬁnancial and technical supports, time, lack of

teachers’ professional development program, and

eligible classrooms for ICT integration, (Alwani and

Soomro, 2010), (Liu and Pange, 2015), (Elemam,

2016), and (Hsu, 2016). In this case, teachers and

students need to be prepared to work with ICT in

order to maximize the roles of ICT integration in

learning.

Inﬂuential factors of ICT integration can be

categorized into two different categories; students

level and university level. In students level relates to

students’ characteristics, ICT home access, and ICT

skills and use, meanwhile in university level involves

University ICT infrastructure, teacher characteristics,

(Chiraz, 2016). In a review study about global

Hadijah, S. and Shalawati, .

ICT Integration Trends in EFL (English as Foreign Language) Classrooms.

DOI: 10.5220/0009058600450051

In Proceedings of the Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education and Humanity (ICoSEEH 2019) - Sustainable Development in Developing Country for Facing Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 45-51

ISBN: 978-989-758-464-0

experience of technology integration in EFL contexts,

there are eight-main factors of the integration which

appeared in several countries;

• Teachers’ competence (Turkey, Indonesia, Saudi

Arabia)

• Accessibility(Saudi,Malaysia,Indonesia).

• Lack of training on technology use (Saudi Arabia,

Bangladesh, Malaysia).

• School Necessity (Iran).

• Space an resources (Saudi Arabia).

• Budget (United State of America)

• Perceived Usefulness, (North America).

• Academic workload (Australia), (Ammade et al.,

2018).

Based on the previous study, Indonesia faced two

main problems which relate to teachers’ competence

and technology accessibility which still limited.

Some efforts need to be taken to ﬁgure the barriers

of the ICT integration in education, as stated by

(Aslan and Zhu, 2016), facilitating the teachers to

receive professional development program should be

considered as an effort to enable the deployment

of ICT more conﬁdently in teaching and learning

contexts. Regular training of ICT integration program

has to be set by government or other parties who

concern of the teachers’ quality in integrating ICT,

(Hadijah and Shalawati, 2017). In addition, the

professional development program should also be

focused on improving the teachers’ self-esteem and

providing more speciﬁc content of particular ﬁeld,

and developing high level learning, (Hsu, 2016).

Some strategies can also be taken by teachers to

affect the effectiveness of the ICT integration;

technology plans, in-service training, strong

infrastructures, technical supports, and role models,

(Goktas et al., 2009). It means that teachers should

prepare and implement technology plans by providing

time for preparing the implementation of the ICT in

their teaching and increase the quality and quantity

of service training in ICT. Moreover, increasing

the number of devices to enhance learning through

technology which should be supported by some

technical supports. Lastly, teachers should be role

models for prospective teachers in teaching through

technology.

In a study done by (Elemam, 2016), there are

some sorts of technology applications used by 40

teachers in their teaching programs, they refer to

word processing, power point presentation, data base

(access), spread sheet (excel), internet, and email.

Working with digital story telling can also be another

way that can be employed by teachers in teaching

through the integration of multimedia technology into

the classrooms, (Heo, 2009).

Digital story telling is a part of storytelling that

uses digital media, for example; art, oral history,

creative writing, speaking, photographs, music, news

clippings, digital videos, the web, graphic design,

sound engineering, or animation. Digital story telling

also brings beneﬁts in relation to improve students’

interest in exploring new ideas, facilitate discussion,

promote the 21

century skills and multiple literacy

skills. (Hsu, 2016).

Since the integration of ICT in education has been

widely implemented in the classrooms, hence this

study is focused on studying the ICT trends in English

as Foreign Language Classrooms and EFL students’

perspectives to the ICT integration are two points

which are elaborated in this study.

2 METHOD

This study involved 33 undergraduate students in

English Department of Education Faculty, they were

invited to voluntary ﬁll out online questionnaire for

this research purposes. The participants were in 16

up to 25 years old students who mostly had started

learning English when they were at 6 up to 10 years

old. The participants were chosen to involve in this

study because they were assumed to have adequate

learning experiences to work with technology devices

in their language learning process.

This study worked on descriptive research

design in order to describe ICT trends in EFL

classroom. Both quantitative and qualitative methods

were applied by distributing questionnaire to the

participants. According to (Jhonson and Cristensen,

2014) in (Elemam, 2016), questionnaire is an

instrument to collect personal data of research

participants by completing any information needed.

The questionnaire was constructed based on the

indicators in table 1:

Table 1: Questionnaire’s Indicators.

No Indicators

Number of

questions

Personal Experience of using

technology in English learning

Sorts of technology devices used

in learning English

Students’ perspectives towards ICT

integration in EFL context.

The participants were encouraged to ﬁll out the

forms by selecting some options and writing detail

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

information based on the tasks in the form. List of

the questions in the questionnaire sheet are provided

in the table 2 below:

Table 2: List of Questions in Questionnaire.

No. Questions

1 How old are you now?

How old were you when you

ﬁrstly studied English?

Do you use technology devices

when learning English ?

What are the learning media that

you used to use when learning English?

5 How long have you been learning English ?

What are the tools that you love to use when

learning English in the classroom?

Among Computer, Laptop, and Smartphone, what

is the most favorite device that you use in learning

English both inside and outside the classrooms?

Why?

What are technology devices that you love to use

when learning English in the classroom?

Do you think using laptop or computer in learning

English both inside and outside the

classroom is very helpful?

How do you use laptop or computer in learning

English in the classroom?

How do you use laptop or computer in learning

English out of the classroom?

Do you think that using smartphone in learning

English both inside and outside the classroom is

very helpful?.

How do you use your smartphone in learning

English in the classroom?

How do you use your smartphone in learning

English out of the classroom?

How do you use your most favorite technology

device (computer or laptop, or smartphone) to

improve your listening, reading, writing and

speaking skills?

What do you think about integration of technology

in English Language teaching?

Do you still need your teacher’s guidance on how

to use your favorite device( computer or laptop or

smartphone) to improve your English Skill ? Why?

What should English teachers do when teaching by

using technology?

The questionnaires were distributed to the targeted

participants by using Google form. In this phase, the

link of the questionnaire form was copied and shared

to the participants. They were assigned to submit

their answers by twenty-four hours and provide

the information individually based on their personal

experiences and perspectives. Each participant

was only allowed to give their responses in the

questionnaire once only.

The collected data were analysed both

quantitatively and qualitatively. The quantitative

data were organised in terms of sort of devices

deployed by the students in EFL context, and the

students’ perspective towards the ICT integration,

based on their learning experiences were analysed

by on students’ responses on essay questions.

Beforehand, the process of data organisation had

been categorised in the Google form in answers

report sheet. Hence, the data could be read and

implied properly.

3 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION

3.1 ICT Trends in EFL Classroom

The following chart depicts the students’ trends in

using technology to support their English learning

process. Most of them use smartphone in their

learning, it is also supported by the use of laptop

which is in less percentage, compared to smartphone

uses. The students do not use computer any more in

their learning, but their preferences in using printed

sources, such as books and magazines are still in

average number. The detail description about the

students’ trends can be seen in ﬁgure 1 below:

Figure 1: Students’ Trends in Learning English.

The ﬁgure above clearly presents that smartphone

is the most preferable devise used by the students.

When they were asked to select one of their most

favourite devices among computer, laptop, and

Smartphone in learning English, most of the students

selected Smartphone as their favourite one. They

conveyed that Smartphone’s simplicity and portability

are two main reasons for using it. As stated by some

students in the following statements:

I prefer to use Smartphone, because it is easy to bring

everywhere I go

Smartphone. It is easier. Laptop is too heavy to

bring. Plus, smartphone can access internet same

like laptop. So I’d prefer to use smartphone.

Smartphone, it’s simpler to ﬁnd English sources or

e-books.

ICT Integration Trends in EFL (English as Foreign Language) Classrooms

I prefer to use smartphone in learning English

because it’s simple and useful

The easiness offered by Smartphone can facilitate

the students in their learning process, they enjoy using

smartphone whether in or out of the class. In more

speciﬁc, some students said that using smartphone

can help them when facing some problems with

unfamiliar vocabulary. They can straight away

open their Smartphone applications, such as online

dictionary or other English learning applications

in their phones to consult meaning of unfamiliar

words. Besides that, they could easily open videos

in YouTube which can be very helpful for them in

enhancing their listening and speaking skills. In

addition, some students also said that they could

improve their pronunciation by learning from you

tube in their smartphone. In other words, the use

of smartphone help the students better to solve their

learning problems and support their learning process

to get more authentic learning sources.

Furthermore, the following ﬁgure presents the

percentage of the students who prefer to use

Smartphone in their learning:

Figure 2: Students’ Responses toward Smartphone Use.

Based on the chart above, almost 75% students

were strongly agree that using smartphone is very

helpful for their language learning experiences. None

of them denied about the beneﬁts of using the device,

but there are still less than 10% of them are in neutral

option which means that they still ﬁnd some other

devices that resemble the beneﬁts of Smartphone.

The following statements present how Smartphone

contributes towards the students’ learning process

both in and outside of the classrooms:

I can chat with my lecturer through my phone on

WhatsApp. I usually ask some lessons that I still

don’t understand

I use my smartphone to watch videos in English,

learn from online tutor, and do some online

quiz(toeﬂ/ielts)

I use my smartphone to study in Youtube, read

comics, watch anime with english subtitles ,and

study for exam.

Sometimes, I am stuck to translate or say

something in English. Directly, I open online

dictionary in my smartphone.

Smartphone is very helpful for me because I can

watch and learn any things about English in one

hand. And it is clear enough for me to study.

I usually open twitter application in my hand

phone because i have a group chat that consists

of some members from various countries, so I use

English for communication. It really helps me to

improve my English.

However, for some students, using laptop can

be beneﬁcial as well, particularly when they are

working on presentation projects, they usually create

their presentation slides and present it by using

laptop. Some other students also use laptop to

increase their vocabulary mastery by setting English

as the language used in the laptop, so they can

learn some vocabularies every time they open their

laptop. Besides that, some other students prefer to use

laptop for browsing and reading some articles instead

of using Smartphone. The following information

provides the students’ statements:

I use laptop to make PPT presentation, search

meaning of words or sentence that I found unfamiliar

for me during in the classroom.

The setting of my laptop is in English, so i can

increase my vocabulary, also when I am studying

English, I can open links or internet about what

my teacher teaches, so I can read and get more

information about that.

I downloaded some applications that related to

English and it’s fun. I use it by my laptop such as

kahoot and Google classroom.

Making Power point And word for assignments, I

usually use laptop.

Sometimes I use laptop if I did my presentation or

using kahoot.

I do my powerpoint presentation, I do my task, read

online materials.

From the above statements, the students admitted

that the use of laptop cannot be ignored in their

learning process since it highly contributes to help

them in creating presentation slides. In addition,

they could work more effectively when using

laptop, particularly when they have to utilize certain

applications, such as Google Classroom and Kahoot.

Moreover, when using smartphone or laptop in the

students’ learning activities, they usually use some

ICoSEEH 2019 - The Second International Conference on Social, Economy, Education, and Humanity

applications to enhance their learning. Actually,

nowadays, there are a large number of applications

that can be deployed by the students to improve their

English learning, but there are only few applications

that the students are familiar with. The following

ﬁgure shows sorts of devices are usually used by the

students in their language learning process:

Figure 3: Sort of Devices Used in learning English.

The ﬁgure 3 listed some devices which are

frequently deployed by the students, they are

Youtube, Online English Dictionary, and PowerPoint

Program for presentation with over than 50% of

the students work with them. Interestingly Social

media appeared in the second category of applications

used by the students with approximately 50% and

Kahoot followed the social media with about 33%

users. Meanwhile Google Classroom, Edmodo, Blog,

and Wikipedia were only used by less than 12% of

the students. A large number of the students work

with Youtube that they access from their smartphone,

they use this application to practice listening, reading

and speaking skills, while for writing skill, some

students use social media, such as Instagram or other

applications, such as Google Classroom, Edmodo,

Blog, and Wikipedia.

3.2 Students’ Perspectives to the ICT

Integration in EFL Classroom

In relation to the students’ perspectives towards ICT

integration in English language teaching context,

three questions were delivered to the participants;

• What do you think about the integration of

technology in English Language teaching?

• Do you still need your teacher’s guidance on how

to use your favorite device( computer or laptop

or smartphone) to improve your English Skill ?

Why?

• What should English teachers do when teaching

by using technology?

For the ﬁrst question, all of the students aware

that the integration of technology in English language

teaching brings good values to improve their English

skills. In addition, as prospective English teachers,

the students believe that technology can help them a

lot in teaching English in the future since there many

choices of applications that they can bring into the

classrooms. Moreover, the integration of technology

provides different learning atmosphere that can

stimulate the students in learning the language better.

They can br independent learners in ﬁguring out

some problems in their learning or practicing the

language skills that they want to develop. In other

words, the existence of the technology can kill the

students’ boredom and motivate them to always make

innovation in their learning process. Some of the

students’ statements about the ﬁrst question can be

seen in following:

Question : What do you think about integration of

technology in English Language teaching?

Responses : In technology era, it’s okay for using

technology for learning. because it’s simpler.

In this modern era, I think integrating the

technology with English language teaching can

help teachers to guide the students to learn

English better.

Using technology, learning and teaching process

about English can give positive impact and has

strongly inﬂuence the students, for example we

can converse with native speakers and search for

scholarship information overseas.

It’s very good, because it makes easier to learn

english in many conditions and everywhere. The

beneﬁt of this integration in teacher side is

to make teacher more creative to teach in the

classroom.

Furthermore, based on the second question, most

of the students still require the teacher’s guidance

in using technology in their learning process. In

this case, the students stated that the teacher’s roles

are interchangeable, no matter how advance the

technology is, the teacher’s existence in the class

is still highly required. Eventhough technology

can facilitates the students to ﬁnd information, they

still believe that their teacher can provide more

information as well. On the other hand, there

are only a few students who claimed that they

can independently work with technology to ﬁnd out

any information that they need. Some lists of the

students’ statements regarding to the second question

are presented below:

ICT Integration Trends in EFL (English as Foreign Language) Classrooms

Question : Do you still need your teacher’s

guidance on how to use your favorite device(

computer or laptop or smartphone) to improve

your English Skill ?

Responses : Yes of course, because i believe that

teacher knows more about how to use it in the

more effective way. I just do what i think it’s good

for my English. I do it just because i like it. I

don’t know whether it’s effective for my English

or not.(Agreed)

Yes because I still need guidance for ﬁx my

English, give TMI about English and make it

better. If I have no teacher to guide me, I

might be in a doubt or sometime, I’ll be confused

of something I learn and I don’t have someone

professional to ask.(Agreed)

I think no, because I already being adult. Hehe,

and I know how to use my smartphone to learn

English. (Disagreed)

I guess i can do it on my own, but if someone tell

me about some new app that can become really

handy for me, i will probably use it. (Disagreed)

In the last question, when the students were

asked about what English teachers should do when

teaching by using technology, mostly the student said

that the teachers need to be creative in deploying

the technology devices because the core point of

utilizing technology devices in learning is not simply

about using technology as learning media, but it

should empower the students to have better learning

experiences and skills. Here are some students’

views about what teachers have to do when deploying

technology in teaching:

Question : What should English teachers do when

teaching by using technology?

Responses : They should be creative when they’re

creating the media by using technology. Also they

have to teach the students by interesting way to

catch their attention to study English.

Provide English lesson with fun activities using

technology wisely.

If the teachers can’t join the class because urgent

reason, they can send some homework or giving

link about the English topic so the class didn’t

cancelled. By using technology teachers can give

learning games simple so the students understand

easily.

In my perspective, the teacher should be creative

in teaching by using technology. They cannot

just ask the students to understand the lesson by

showing them power point, video or pictures by

explaining nothing. If the media is interesting

enough, the teachers’ way of teaching should be

attractive too. Because, no matter how great the

media used in teaching, it means nothing when the

teacher cannot use it properly.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The purposes of this study were to describe ICT

trends in EFL context and the EFL students’

perspectives to the ICT integration. The ﬁndings

depict that smartphone is the most favourite devise

used by the students, they conveyed that its simplicity

and portability are two main considerations for using

it to support their learning experiences. In addition,

the students aware that the integration of technology

in English language teaching brings good values to

improve their English skills. The technology can

facilitate them better in ﬁnding more information

to improve their English skills. The advancement

of technology to support the students in English

language learning does not affect the importance roles

of teachers as facilitators in learning. The teachers are

still highly required by the students to guide them in

their learning process. However, the teachers need

to be creative in deploying the technology devices

because the core point of utilizing technology devices

in learning is not simply about using the technology

as media, but it should empower the students to have

better learning experiences and skills.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors would like to thank the Research

Management Center of Universitas Islam Riau for

funding this research in 2019 grant.

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ICT Integration Trends in EFL (English as Foreign Language) Classrooms