Abstract

The present study aimed at determining EFL instructors’ attitudes towards using technology in language classes. The participants of the study were 40 male and female EFL instructors at Guilan Province, Iran during the spring semester of 2010. The Technology Attitude Scale (TAS) was utilized to collect the relevant data. The TAS consists of twenty items with responses provided on a Likert scale. The participants were also asked to respond to three open-ended questions. Descriptive statistics was used to determine the respondents’ attitude towards technology use. The findings of the study revealed that both male and females had an almost highly positive attitude towards technology. However, based on the descriptive statistics, the male instructors had a more positive attitude towards technology use compared to their female counterparts. To determine the role of gender, an independent- samples t-test was run which revealed no significant difference. One-way ANOVA showed that the responses of three groups of participants who were distinguished based on their teaching experience were not statistically different from each other. Based on the qualitative section of the study, the most important obstacles enumerated by the respondents were lack of facilities in language classes, teachers’ lack of skills and relevant knowledge and students’ preference of traditional methods and their lack of familiarity with technology use, respectively.

Keywords:

Attitude, case study, EFL, instructional technology, instructors,

References

Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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Copyright

The authors have no competing interests.