The Role of ICT in EFL Teaching
An action research project with young learners in the Czech Republic
Neil Kisby
fut04ure07stars@yahoo.com
www.geocities.com/fut04ure07stars
INTRODUCTION
A common problem for EFL teachers is whether to take the trouble to incorporate ICT
into their teaching. Many teachers are afraid of failure for various reasons. Will the
class be “noisy”? Will they stay on task or take every opportunity to go off surfing the
Internet? Will they enjoy the tasks you set? Will the hardware facilities operate as
they should? What will happen if the Internet crashes? Can I manage without the IT
teacher being around? Will my students really benefit from the use of ICT in the long
term or is it just playing around, wasting time? Can I assess what my students do and
how? This action research attempts to answer some of these questions and to
explore the problem of introducing ICT into EFL lessons. It particularly seeks to
determine the role of ICT in creating a more motivating environment for young EFL
learners. Very impressive list of questions – are you thinking of doing a doctorate in
this field?
1. AIMS

To analyse and examine the effect of using CALL materials which I have
created.

To discover whether the use of my CALL materials enhances pupils’
motivation.

To examine how SEN pupils react to the regular use of ICT in EFL lessons.

To investigate how to further develop these CALL materials optimally.

To examine whether the use of the materials leads to real language
improvement. If so, what skills are improved and to what extent is the
language learning process restricted?

To prove that an extra lesson of EFL per week should be devoted to the use of
ICT. (NB: in academic language, we don’t “prove” anything any more – we just
show, demonstrate, indicate, suggest, etc. Political correctness, I guess. Click
here and type “prove” into lemma and see how it is used. Line 00039 is
instructive!)
2. BACKGROUND READING
Research by Ames (1992) has shown that one type of motivation goal reached by
using ICT is the performance goal, which is directed towards achieving success in
relation to the achievements of one’ s colleagues. Ames has also shown that “tasks
that involve variety and diversity are more likely to facilitate an interest in learning.”
Motivation theories have also recognised the effects of the locus of control of the
learner. The extent to which learners see events as being under their personal
control (Blumenfeld 1992) will also affect their attitude towards ICT.
Davis et al. (1989) developed a theory claiming that students will only accept the use
of ICT if they find it both useful and easy to use. Increased motivation through
perceived value of an activity might lead to:

A greater interest and involvement in learning;

Greater self-esteem;

Determination to achieve specific tasks;

Spending more time on the learning task;

Trying to do better than one’s peers; and

Achieving more control over one’s own learning.
Research by Story and Sullivan (1986) supports the idea that pupils using ICT which
is structured to provide progressive achievement in sub-tasks are more likely to be
motivated to continue their work than when the tasks themselves are too difficult.
This should be taken into consideration in material design. Materials should enable
pupils to achieve progression in their learning and thereby be continually motivated.
According to a study by Gardner, Dukes and Discenza (1993), the ICT experience
must be pleasant, rewarding, important and without coercion.
Studies done on the use of Integrated Learning Systems claim that pupils using this
type of software are motivated to stay on task longer and that they take pride in their
achievements using the materials. However, these types of exercises are now
regarded by many people not to be a good representation of the way in which people
learn. Furthermore, there is little substantiated evidence that this type of software
improves pupils’ skills other than at a very basic level. However, in a study of the use
of two different ILS in primary and secondary schools (NCET 1994), researchers
found that there was an increased commitment and dedication to studying, shown by
the higher levels of concentration when using the systems, with fewer non-task
interactions taking place, compared to the pupils in non-ILS using classes. One
secondary teacher observed “These kids are doing more in thirty-five minutes than in
a whole week of conventional lessons.” But what are the long-term (an important
question, and one too infrequently addressed) contributions of ILS to pupils’
learning?
To summarize, evidence from studies in education has shown that the main aspects
of pupils’ motivation are an enhanced sense of achievement, increase in self-directed
learning, enhanced enjoyment and interest, enhanced self-esteem and an increased
commitment to the learning task. However, the need for teacher intervention is
essential to avoid leaving the technology to control the lessons. The teacher needs to
see the real effect ICT materials have on the learning process. Furthermore, there
should be an appropriate balance between hands-on and other work and the
motivational aspects of using ICT will be effective only with appropriate planning and
guidance from the teacher.
3. CLASSROOM CONTEXT
3.1
School facilities
The school is a small state primary-middle school with approximately 400 pupils aged
six to fifteen. It is located in a small town in South Bohemia. The main foreign
language taught is English. German is taught only in Year 9 and as an optional
subject, although German as a second foreign language will be introduced into
mainstream teaching next year. Most classes are not split for language instruction
and typical class sizes are eighteen to twenty students (that is not too many, is it?).
The school is equipped with two computer rooms – one for using local internal
programs and the other with computers connected to the Internet. There are twenty
computers in the latter, all equipped with headphones.
The school is planning to increase the number of English lessons per week in Year
Seven from three to four. Shall this extra lesson be devoted to ICT for ELT?
3.2
Methodology
Up to now, the use of ICT in ELT has been rather limited. Some teachers have used
the Terrasoft ELT software that the school possesses, perhaps even overused with
very little planning and very little effect on pupils’ overall knowledge (an
impression/opinion, surely). I trust it was a way to do something “for a change” and a
time when both pupils and the teacher could have a rest from the everyday
classroom environment. The school also possesses some interactive software
packages for younger learners (9-11), which are used occasionally. On the whole,
ELT is mostly taught using traditional classroom methods. Up to now, no materials
have been produced to accompany textbooks or topics used in the ELT curriculum in
the school.
3.3
Students
Age: 12 (Year Six)
Culture and Language: All students share the same culture and L1.
Level: The students are in their third year of ELT study. They have three lessons of
English a week. They use Open Doors 1 textbook, which they begin in Year Five,
reaching lesson four / five by the end of that year. Year Six is the first year of
secondary education in the school. Pupils enter this stage with very differing levels of
achievement. Three of the eighteen pupils in the class have special educational
needs. In general, the class is mixed ability with great differences between individual
pupils.
Attitude: In general, pupils show interest and cooperate well, although the three SEN
(I am not familiar with this acronym – I presume it is not the Czech word!) pupils and
perhaps two others have concentration problems, finding it difficult to stay on task for
longer periods of time, of course. The Monday lesson is lesson four before lunch.
This sometimes proves to be a time when pupils lack concentration, regularly
checking their watches and evidently thinking about what they are going to be served
for lunch.
4. THE PRE-TEST
4.1
The Activity
Students are introduced to the CALL material which I have created – a suite of Hot
Potatoes exercises to revise and refresh the grammar structures, vocabulary and
topics of Units One to Six of Open Doors 1. I explained the nature and purpose of the
HP exercises, the different types of exercise and the way I wanted them to proceed,
i.e. to experiment with different exercises to find optimal ones for their own needs.
4.2
Some General Observations
None of the pupils had ever used this type of material before and many of them had
difficulty understanding the English language instructions. A commonly reported
problem.
Some pupils were confused as to what to fill in the cloze exercises, perhaps because
the items revised in the exercises had been taught several months before. I had to
give more coherent explanations to assist them with that. (even teachers find that
cloze activities they have created in the past require considerable thinking)
Once the students had a clear understanding of what they had to do in the exercise, I
observed that all students were hard at work, heads down and fully concentrated on
the job in hand. I was amazed at their commitment to complete the exercises.
Pupils really enjoyed working with the material. If they made a lot of mistakes, they
repeated the exercise.
Pupils worked at their own pace, all eager to complete as many exercises as
possible.
Several pupils even took down the website address to continue at home.
Pupils compared each other’ s achievements.
Pupils could skip exercises which they found too easy or too hard. How gratifying!
Unfortunately, after about twenty-five minutes, the geocities site became
inaccessible, evidently overloaded by the eighteen eager users. I presume you were
using HPs. What about using them offline?
4.3
The Feedback
I had a verbal feedback session with the pupils and they were asked to fill in a
questionnaire with the aim to:
Record the pupils’ reactions to the activity.
Check usefulness and ease of use.
Check the degree to which pupils were conscious of why they were doing the
exercises.
Most of the pupils enjoyed using the material and thought it was useful and would like
to work with the material on a regular basis. Several pupils used the website out of
school or asked my colleague to use it during IT lessons. The matching and
crossword activities proved to be most popular. The time limits were acknowledged
as being long enough. On the other hand, some of the pupils admitted to regularly
merely guessing answers or overusing the hint or show answer buttons rather than
consciously arriving at answers by themselves. That was true for two out of three of
the SEN pupils and two other pupils (not many ,then). Many of the students
commented that the English instructions were not really clear for them and they had
to guess what to do or ask if I had not instructed them. Most of them found flaws in
the cloze exercises as it was not clear to them exactly what they should fill in.
5. THE DESIGN
5.1
Objectives
The focus of the lessons was on improving motivation through ICT. Pupils are given
the chance to work at their own pace and to do tasks that fit their own abilities. Pupils
should have events under their personal control and are given the opportunity to do
tasks that involve variety and diversity. Pupils can compare their achievements with
those of their peers. Clear goals are provided and students perceive a meaningful
reason for engaging in the activity. The materials are relevant to what they have
already learned. Some of the materials provide an up-to-date cross-curricular
approach with relevance to the real world the pupils live in. The revision aspect
should iron out differences between pupils which have occurred during the first six
lessons of the textbook, gradually bringing them to a similar level. Talented pupils are
provided with a new environment that challenges their knowledge and less talented
ones are given the chance to “catch up” by repeating exercises which they did not
manage on their first attempt, perhaps at home. Yes, this is one of the major plusses.
5.2
Lesson Format
Pupils went through the suite of exercises according to their own needs / abilities,
repeating or skipping exercises as they required. The teacher provided guidance and
instruction where necessary.
5.3
Materials
The materials consisted of a suite of Hot Potatoes exercises to revise grammar,
vocabulary and topics from Units One to Six of Open Doors 1 textbook.
5.4

Activities
Cloze exercises
Pupils filled in missing words into texts. Some of the exercise were grammar-based,
focusing on structures like There is / are, some / any, ordinal numbers, have got and
some were vocabulary based. Text comprehension was an important element in this
type of exercise.

Jumbled sentence exercises
These practised pupils ability to use correct word order and build sentences with
various structures like questions and negatives using there is / are, have got.

Matching exercises
These practised vocabulary with flashcards, drag and drop activities or finding the
right equivalent. Most were based on English-Czech translation.

Crosswords
These again provided vocabulary and spelling practice on various topics.

Quiz activities
These provided a wider context but also mostly involved the correct use of
vocabulary.
5.5
Groupings
The activities were carried out with pupils working individually – one pupil per
computer.
6. THE POST-TEST
6.1
Observations
This followed the same procedure as the pre-test but I had only five pupils working on
the website at one time so that there was no risk of the geocities site crashing again.
The pupils spent the whole forty-five minute session working hard to complete the
exercises which they had not managed previously. Pupils were concentrated and ontask for the whole time. I asked them not to guess answers and not to use the Show
Answers button until they had tried their best using the Hint button. Observations
show that they respected this. As the pupils now knew what was expected in each of
the exercises, there was no confusion as to what they were supposed to do.
I then experimented further by doing the exercises in a whole-group environment
using a beamer. I noticed a significant difference in pupil commitment here. Good
procedure and observation. Many pupils simply switched off and let the others do the
work, as is all too often the case in the ordinary ELT classroom situation. This proves
that the ICT environment, where each pupil is in control of what he does, provides
much greater pupil motivation.
6.2
Drawbacks
The only drawback is that the geocities site is only able to cope with five users at a
time for a longer period. This complicated the action research procedure. Yes, I can
see that. If your lab isn’t networked, it doesn’t take very long to copy a folder of HP
activities on to each computer shortly before the lesson.
7. DISCUSSION & EVALUATION
The main aim of the project was to discover whether the use of the CALL material
enhances pupils´ motivation. In my opinion,1 the result is that students are positively
motivated by this kind of activity. Pupils were committed and the amount of time
1
My observations lead me to believe …
spent on-task in the lesson was much higher than in the ordinary classroom
environment. After a little extra guidance, SEN pupils found the exercises stimulating
and rewarding. All pupils seemed to take pride in their achievements. It was very
pleasing to see pupils hard at work even in the knowledge that they wouldn´t be
getting a mark for it. I am convinced that an extra lesson of EFL per week should be
devoted to the use of ICT.
My main reservations are:

It is time-consuming to produce such materials and keep them up to date so
that the pupils have new challenges and can progress into exercises
constantly offering revision of new vocabulary, grammar and other topics.

The language learning process is restricted and much of the material is the
drill and practice type. I am not convinced that such exercises lead to real
active L2 improvement and they do not involve communication skills at all. The
real long-term effect of this kind of practice will have to be further investigated.

It is also clear that the exercises have to be further developed with an
emphasis on quality and relevance rather than quantity.
8. CONCLUSIONS
Although the Hot Potatoes activities proved to be a great success, it is clear that
some basic principles have to be respected if students are to remain motivated:

Check beforehand that the network and software are working;

Always consider pupils´ previous ICT experience;

Always introduce the purpose and objectives of the lesson;

Match the task to their abilities, ensuring that it is adequately challenging but
not too difficult;

Monitor their work to ensure that they remain on task;

Allow enough time at the end to review the pupils´ progress.
The action research on the use of Hot Potatoes in ELT is of a very short-term nature.
Will pupils remain motivated if they are fed Hot Potatoes every single week of the
school year? Will they not become tired and frustrated of the monotonous character
of the exercises? Furthermore, Hot Potatoes provide little opportunity for pupils to
compare their knowledge with the real world and to identify a relevance and
importance to their school work.
One of the major motivation factors was comparison of results with peers. In the
future, it may be necessary to give marks for pupils´ work or at least publish a kind of
league table with their results. This may help to keep up this kind of motivation as
pupils need to see that their efforts are not going unnoticed.
It is clear that if the extra lesson of English in Year Seven is to be dedicated to ICT
for ELT, the course cannot merely consist of Hot Potatoes exercises but must also
include other types of ICT activities. Webquests or Keebooks will bring a more crosscurricular, up-to-date real-world element into the lessons. Word processing activities
will promote active communication skills. Multimedia packages will initiate essential
listening and speaking activities. Hot Potatoes exercises must be enhanced with
media objects such as video and audio links so that they will become more appealing
to pupils and not lose their attraction.
REFERENCES
Learning to Teach Using ICT in the Secondary School
Edited by Marilyn Leask and Norbert Pachler.
Routlege, London 1999.
Multimedia Call: Lessons to be learned from research on instructed SLA
Carol A. Chapelle
Language Learning & Technology Vol. 2, No. 1, July 1998, pp. 22-34
SOURCES
Open Doors Student’ s Book 1
Norman Whitney
OUP