THE MAIN FEATURES OF LEARNING ENGLISH THROUGH COMPUTERS IN COLLEGE-LEVEL EFL STUDENTS IN TAIWAN

In recent years, a lot of researchers have shown great interest in the demand for foreign language instruction and learning to explore how to help meet students’ need. The use of technology in teaching foreign language provides access to meet students’ requirements, such as providing access to cultural knowledge, expanding authentic learning resources, and communicating with native-speakers of the target language. Meanwhile, the new technologies offer many possibilities to foreign language learners since they have the potential to make up for the limitations of time and space (e.g., individual differences, limited class hours, no accessible native speaker, etc.) and to expand learning resources through the usage of the Internet, E-mail, distance-learning, etc., especially for EFL (English for Foreign Language ) learning.

In Taiwan, many teachers seem to be willing to apply technology in their classrooms because of its claimed beneficial results in easing the learning process. Therefore, attempts have been made to incorporate it into the curriculum at various educational levels. Integrating technology into curriculum has been proclaimed as beneficial for decades in Taiwan, and some of the researchers have tended to explore effective ways of using technology to promote English language abilities in EFL teaching and learning( Huss,1990). However, motivation and attitude of students toward using technology for learning English are two main factors that affect whether technology can be effectively integrated into classroom instruction or not.

This research intends to explore in relation to students’ motivation and attitudes toward using technology to improve their language learning, especially in the college-level EFL students and to examine whether any correlation exist between students’ technological knowledge and academic achievement in relation to their attitudes towards computer-assisted instruction.

The findings give us implication that CALL (computer assisted language learning) instruction might be a beneficial teaching approach for teachers. Whether its potential can be developed or not depends on how teachers use it. Teachers need to know how to design suitable CALL activities to teach English for students to arouse their interest in learning English and construct meaning from their learning experiences. Therefore, based on the results of this study, we hope not only to uncover some potential issues of EFL teaching and learning among Taiwanese college students, but also to provide practicing instructional methods to promote Taiwanese college students’ English abilities through technology.