Computer In English Language Learning

The Use of Computer in English Language Learning

It was Wednesday, 8 October 2014 at 12.30 PM, we gave the questionnaires about the use of computer in English language learning to five women and five men whose ages between 18 to 21 years old. The questionnaires were given to the respondents while they were in the student hall, Sanata Dharma University. It took a short time about 5 minutes for them to answer all the questions. They didn’t ask anything regarding to the questionnaires distribution, therefore, the distribution went well without any obstacles. Computer is very useful for us nowadays. Nine respondents have a computer in their home and all of them have knowledge about computer, although six of them only fairly know about computer.

Computer is very helpful for the respondents whom are students to write essays on it since writing on computer is very effective. Since, we can edit and revise our writing without using too much paper, writing essays on the computer is also more enjoyable for our respondents rather than writing it by hands. Moreover, using computer is also a good way to find knowledge or learn English since some of the computers used by us provide Internet facility. Unfortunately, most of the teachers feel that computers are their rival. Whereas, computers and teachers should be seen as compliments to each other (Kenning & Kenning, 1984). Recently, the use of computer in teaching language has established itself as an important feature of language teaching profession in modern education. Furthermore, with the technological development and with the advent of multimedia computing, the E-mail, and Internet, the role of computers in language instruction has become an important issue for language teachers throughout the world (Rahimpour, 2011). So, it is very important for us, the teacher candidate, to master the computer. It is because we need to prepare our students to face the reality in their world starting from learning English using computer. In addition, by using computer we can help our students to learn English faster since it is enjoyable for them to learn and work with computer. Furthermore, we have to see the reality that technological developments have been welcomed with open arms by all sections of society such as banking, traffic, word-processing, computer games, student registration, office management, and 21st century language teachers are no exception to this issue. (Levy, 1999) So, it is very important for our students to be accustomed in using computer in the class since using computer will help our students for their careers.