Japanese EFL Learners' Attitudes toward CALL

Miho Fujieda

Kanagawa University

Hiroko Matsuura

Fukushima University

1. INTRODUCTION

With people’s growing interest in the Internet and multimedia, Japanese universities and colleges recently have been competing to install computers in order to attract prospective students. Not only students majoring in computer-related fields, but humanity and social science majors are also required to use computers as part of their coursework. English teachers in Japan, observing the dawn of the multimedia era, have started searching for ways to implement CALL in their own instruction.

Since students’ motivations and interests vary, computers may not be equally beneficial to all students studying English. Teachers often observe how some students have difficulty operating computers, while others become excited with this new tool. There appear to be students who benefit more from computers than others. What are the characteristics of those students?

Research on individual differences in language learning is a growing area of study. The relationship between individual differences and success in language learning has been investigated from various points of view which include age, gender, motivation, language learning strategies, personality type and learning style. (Oxford et al., 1993; Reid, 1995; Carrell et al., 1996). However, most of the research has been conducted in regular classroom settings in ESL/EFL or other foreign language learning contexts.

Chapelle and Jamieson (1986) is one of the few studies which specifically investigated the correlation between learner variables and the effectiveness of CALL instruction in an ESL setting. Using Arabic- and Spanish-speaking ESL students in an intensive course, they examined two student variables -- time spent using CALL and attitude toward the CALL lessons -- as well as four cognitive/affective characteristics -- field independence, ambiguity tolerance, motivational intensity and English-class anxiety. Their results indicated that “the use of CALL lessons predicted no variance on the criterion measures beyond what could be predicted by the cognitive/affective variables” (p. 27). It also found that “time spent using and attitude toward CALL were significantly related to field independence and motivational intensity” (p. 27). They conclude that “(a) certain types of learners may be better suited to some CALL materials than other students and (b) it is necessary to consider many learner variables when searching the effectiveness of CALL” (p.27).

Another research study on the relationship between CALL and student variables and learning styles is the one conducted by Scholfield and Ypsilandis (1994). A group of Greek learners of English were asked to use three different programs in three modes: “Independent,” “Group,” and “Class” uses. Then, the subjects answered the questionnaire which elicited their experiences of and feelings about CALL. The results of the correlational study indicated that age was largely irrelevant to the student responses to the questions, and that experienced CALL users were no longer charmed by superficialities. The authors suggested classroom teachers recognize that “CALL is not something to be just tacked on to a language course but that it must be made integral with what is going on in the rest of the course” (p. 73).

Warschauer (1996) is a more recent study on the relationship between CALL and motivational aspects of learners. He researched the effects on student motivation of using computers for writing and communication in the language classroom. He reported that the subjects overall had a positive attitude toward using computers and that this attitude was consistent across a number of variables which included gender, typing skills, and access to a computer at home. In addition, he identified that self-reported knowledge of computers and amount of experience using e-mail correlated positively with student motivation.

The present study is intended to explore the relationship between learner characteristics and the positive/negative attitudes toward CALL experiences in an EFL context. Since none of the subjects had studied English with a computer before, and the time they could spend on the computer for language learning was quite limited, the researchers focused their study on the subjects’ first reaction to computer usage to study English and analyzed their reactions from various aspects. Students were asked to “play with” various kinds of CALL programs for a certain time and with no obligation, and were asked their general impression after five sessions. The three research questions to be addressed in this study are: (1) How do personal profiles including gender, age, and prior computer experience affect the reactions of students to the CALL sessions?; (2) how does the students’ English proficiency affect their reactions to CALL?; (3) what types of student motivations and learning styles relate to their positive and negative reactions to CALL?

2. METHOD

Subjects

The subjects for the present study were 65 Japanese college and university students in various fields of study, aged from 18 to 26. They were all non-native speakers of English who were studying English as a foreign language as part of their coursework. The makeup of the subjects is summarized in Table 1. Group 1 consisted of 19 second-year students of a four-year university studying English/American Language and Literature. Group 2 had 17 first-year students of the same university studying Chinese. Group 3 was five junior college students majoring in commercial science. Group 4 consisted of 15 second-year engineering students of a four-year university. Group 5 included nine fashion college students.

Table 1　Subjects

Each group of subjects received (1) CELT (Listening, Grammar, Vocabulary), (2) the pre-session questionnaire, (3) five CALL sessions and (4) the post-session questionnaire during their respective once-a-week class hours in Fall 1996. The following is a description of each treatment.

English Proficiency Test

Listening, grammar and vocabulary sections of CELT were administered in order to address our second research question: How does the students’ English proficiency affect their reactions to CALL? The mean score of the CELT was 141.12 with a standard deviation of 46.61. The minimum score was 32 and the maximum score 252.

Pre-session Questionnaire

The pre-session questionnaire was developed in order to collect general information about the subjects’ computer experiences and their attitudes and motivation toward English. Twenty-five statements were prepared and the subjects indicated their attitudes toward each statement on a 7-point scale ranging from 1 “completely disagree” to 7 “completely agree”.

CALL Sessions

Following the pre-session questionnaire, five CALL sessions were conducted using five different types of English-learning software available in Japan. In a CALL classroom, the subjects were briefly introduced to a new type of software every week, then they “played with” the software freely for about 45 minutes. While they were using the software, the instructor circulated among the subjects to assist in operation. The software used was as follows:

Session 1: a HyperCard vocabulary stack. This is a freeware HyperCard stack (created by Kazuhito Tsuchiya) which the instructor can customize by inputting the vocabulary items that the students have already learned. Every card gives the Japanese equivalent for a particular English item and the student types in the corresponding English word. At the end, the software gives the number of correct answers. In this study, subjects were given some stacks which contained vocabulary items that they had learned in previous regular lessons. The researcher prepared several stacks with varying difficulty levels such as a basic verbs stack, a fashion items stack, a cooking vocabulary stack, all recycled from the materials previously learned. The software was black and white with no sound effects.

Session 2: a word formation game Wordtris (Sphere Inc.). This edutainment software is marketed for native speakers of English. Children to adults can enjoy this software by selecting a difficulty level. A block with a letter of the alphabet falls down from the top of the screen. Using the arrow keys, the player moves the block to the right or left. The player gets points according to the English words that she/he forms by dropping the block in the right place. To avoid accidental word formation, the program cleverly gives the player some incentives to think of an appropriate word. This program is in color with graphics and sound effects.

Session 3: beginners’ level listening and grammar software Dictation for Fluency (Seido Foundation) specifically developed for Japanese students of English. It has 12 lessons from which the students can choose. The grammar items include third-person singular verb forms, Wh- questions and answers, articles etc., all combined with listening practices. This is also a black and white HyperCard stack with some sound effects.

Session 4: an English-learning CD-ROM with four different kinds of material. This CD-ROM is a supplement for a Japanese English-learners’ monthly magazine (English Network, November 1996, ALC Press) and has a mini-TOEIC test, a movie preview with English subtitles and vocabulary assistance, a clipping from CBS’s ‘60 Minutes’ program with English subtitles and vocabulary assistance, and a conversation exercise in a business setting with color illustrations. This material is the highest level of difficulty and most sophisticated in terms of technology. It is in color with some moving pictures, graphics and sound.

Session 5: the same CD-ROM as Session 4 but with different contents (English Network, December 1996, ALC Press).

Post-session Questionnaire

The post-session Questionnaire was developed to find the students’ overall reaction toward the CALL sessions. Subjects indicated their reactions to 15 statements using a five-point scale ranging from 1 “strongly disagree” to 5 “strongly agree”.

3. RESULTS

After the five CALL sessions were completed, the subjects were asked to answer the post-session questionnaire, which was intended to elicit their impressions of learning English by computer. The mean ratings to questionnaire items are in Table 2. The results indicated that overall, the subjects’ impressions of CALL were positive. In the questionnaire, “CALL was fun because it was just like playing games” (Item 1), “I want to continue ALL because it was interesting” (Item 2), “I think I would like English more through CALL” (Item 6), “I was happy because I was not required to answer questions in front of class” (Item 9), and “CALL is suitable for me” (Item 14) are positive statements to CALL whereas the rest are in some way negative to CALL. In general, the subjects agreed with those positive items and did not agree with the negative ones except for Item 10, “I thought English conversation with a native speaker teacher might be more interesting.” The mean to Item 10 was 3.0, which was the neutral score on the five-point rating scale.

Table 2 Results of the post-session questionnaire

The relationship between subjects' reactions and such variables as gender, age, computer experience, and English proficiency was examined. Rating scores given to the post-session questionnaire items 1, 2, 6, 9, and 14 were used as students’ positive reaction scores (namely, Positive Sum) since they were the statements which showed whether or not the subjects had a positive attitude toward CALL. The rest of the items were considered as statements negative to CALL. Most of the subjects more or less disagreed with the propositions of the negative items.

First, the differences in reactions of males and females were examined. The mean of the male PS was 17.48 whereas that of the female scores was 19.00. Female reactions were a little more positive to CALL, and the results of t-test indicated there was a significant difference between male and female ratings (t=3.17, p<.01).

Secondly, the correlation between the subjects' age and their reactions to CALL was investigated. The Pearson correlation coefficient indicated the subjects' age and PS had a negative correlation at a significant level (r=-2.66, p<.01). Although none of the subjects had experienced CALL prior to this study, it appeared that the younger students were a little more attracted to CALL.

The third question was how computer experiences affected students’ impressions to CALL. Among total 65 subjects, 53 had experienced using computers while 12 had never used them. The average PS of the “with-experience” group was 18.25 and that of the “without-experience” group was 19.83. Although the group without prior computer experience held a slightly higher mean, these means were not significantly different.

Fourth, the total scores of CELT and the PS were used to see the extent to which there was a relation between subjects' English proficiency and their reactions to CALL. The t-test was run to see whether there was any difference between upper and lower proficiency level groups of impressions. The subjects were divided into upper and lower groups by the CELT average 141.12. The mean PS of the upper group (N=31) was 19.26 and that of the lower group (N=34) was 17.77. The upper group valued CALL a little more positively than the lower group. Their reaction scores, however, were not statistically different.

Another major point to be examined in this paper was the relationship between students’ cognitive and affective styles which significantly relate to students' reactions to CALL. For this purpose, the results of both the pre- and post-session questionnaires were used. Factor analyses were employed on the results of the pre-session questionnaire to detect personality traits. After a Varimax rotation, there were found nine factors among which only six were decided to be used for the study (Table 3). These six factors accounted for 55.6% of the total variance. Items 16, 23 and 1 were categorized under the first factor, namely, “Interests in science and technology.” Factor 2, consisting of Items 3 and 15, showed how actively a person is involved with other people, an important trait of “Extroversion”. Items of Factor 3 appeared to indicate “Integrative motivation in learning a foreign language,” i.e., a motivation “employed when learners wish to integrate themselves within the culture of the second language group” (Brown 1987: 115-116). Factor 4 was named as “Interest in novelty” and Factor 5 as “Tolerance of ambiguity.” Ambiguity tolerance was defined as “a person’s ability to function rationally and calmly in a situation in which interpretation of all stimuli is not completely clear” (Chapelle & Jamieson 1986: 33). Factor 6, namely, “Preference for group work,” indicated whether or not students prefer group work to individual work.

Table 3 Factors

The correlations between these factors and the students' reactions to CALL were then examined. Item scores within each factor were averaged and Pearson correlation coefficients between factor means and reaction scores were calculated. Again, the total scores of Items 1, 2, 6, 9, and 14 of the post-session questionnaire, i.e., the PS's were used. It was expected that some of the factors and the PS's would correlate at the significant level. However, none of the factors correlated significantly with the PS's.

Then the correlation coefficients between the factor means and the means of 15 post-session questionnaire items were calculated. Table 4 shows the results.

Table 4 Correlations between factors and post-session questionnaire items

*p<.05

“-” means “not significant”

Factor 1 did not correlate with any of the items. Factor 2, “Extroversion” had negative correlations with Item 13, “No amount of CALL can improve our English.” Factor 3, namely, “Integrative motivation” had positive correlation with Items 1, 2, and 10: “CALL was fun because it was just like playing games,” “I want to continue CALL because it was interesting,” and “I thought English conversation with a native speaker teacher might be more interesting.” In addition, the factor had negative correlation with Item 3, “I felt the need of textbooks and handouts.” Factor 4, “Interest in novelty” had a positive correlation with Item 10, “I thought English conversation with a native speaker teacher might be more interesting” and had a negative correlation with Item 15, “I was sometimes afraid that I was doing something wrong with the computer.” Factor 5, the cognitive trait of “Tolerance of ambiguity,” had negative correlations with Items 4, 12, and 15: “I was tense when using a computer,” “I was always concerned with the other's pace,” and “I was sometimes afraid that I was doing something wrong with the computer.” Factor 6, “Preference for group work,” had positive correlations with Item 6, “I think I would like English more through CALL” and Item 9, “I was happy because I was not required to answer questions in front of class.”

4. DISCUSSION

In this study, female students rather than their male counterparts and younger students rather than older students tended to indicate higher ratings toward CALL. In particular, the researchers more often than not observed that female students enjoyed cute animations and impressive still pictures in the actual sessions. When a problem came up during the exercises, female students more often consulted with and helped one another to solve the problem. These positive and cooperative attitudes held by the females probably affected their higher ratings.

On the other hand, as the results above indicated, prior computer experience and English proficiency did not appear to affect subjects’ reactions to CALL. These results may simply suggest that students with or without prior computer experience and students of all levels of English proficiency could be more or less benefited from CALL. However, it cannot be said that the type of software and/or the way it was presented to the subjects did not at all affect the results. The computer software used in this study varied both in type and in English level. Some sophisticated software showed parts of enjoyable dramas, and others were simply fun, easy games. Some conversation software consisted of many useful expressions and others serious documentaries with insightful cultural information. In addition, the subjects in this study could try a variety of software freely without any specific class objectives and also without any fear of being graded by teachers. The researchers did not control these aspects. If the subjects had been asked to use any specific software with certain objectives and goals, and if they had been tested on what they had learned, different results might have been drawn.

As for the relationship between the six factors extracted and students’ reactions to CALL, some interesting points emerged.

Factor 1 did not correlate with any of the items. In this study, the students' reactions to CALL had little correlation with their general interests in science and technology. This may imply that even a subject fairly uninterested in science and technology could enjoy the CALL sessions while a subject more interested in this field might be bored.

Factor 2, “Extroversion,” had negative correlations with Item 13, “No amount of CALL can improve our English.” This implies a subject who is introverted tended to think that studying with a computer could not improve his/her own English. On the other hand, a subject who is extroverted tended to think that studying with computers could improve their English. It seems that a person who tends to be actively involved with people can be also actively engaged when using a computer and studying English, and therefore, can solve problems, if any appear, by him/herself or by asking someone nearby. In addition, probably because of this style and strategy, such a student has a rather optimistic view regarding how much his/her English can improve.

Factor 3, namely, “Integrative motivation” had positive correlation with Items 1, 2, and 10: “CALL was fun because it was just like playing games,” “I want to continue CALL because it was interesting”, and “I thought English conversation with a native speaker teacher might be more interesting.” In addition, the factor had negative correlation with Item 3, “I felt the need of textbooks and handouts.” Students with stronger integrative motivation probably wished to further improve their English by CALL identifying this method to be effective. However, the ultimate goal of such students is to integrate with people of the target language. Thus, they seemed to think a native speaker teacher had more value than a computer. On the other hand, as in the correlation with Item 3, subjects with less integrative motivation tended to show more anxiety about the fact that they did not have textbooks and handouts. It can be assumed that those subjects, in turn, had more instrumental motivation. It is generally understood that a learner with integrative motivation is better at speaking, while a learner with instrumental motivation is better at grammar and vocabulary. Subjects with instrumental motivation as opposed to integrative motivation probably wished to review spellings, idioms, and grammatical items by checking with textbooks and handouts, and therefore, felt anxious that they did not have the relevant textbooks and handouts.

Factor 4 was “Interest in novelty,” which had a positive correlation with Item 10, “I thought English conversation with a native speaker teacher might be more interesting” and had a negative correlation with Item 15, “I was sometimes afraid that I was doing something wrong with the computer.” As the correlation with Item 10 indicated, subjects more interested in novel things tended to show their interest in conversations with native speakers of English. Their inclination may be explained by the fact that conversing with natives was still a new and interesting experience for many of them. On the other hand, as the negative correlation between Factor 4 and Item 15 indicated, those students not likely to pursue novel things tended to feel more anxiety that they were doing something wrong during the sessions. Hence, the more students were interested in novelty, the less anxiety they might have. Students who like novel things may be used to using computers and new software. Or they may just be fascinated by the idea of learning English with a computer.

Factor 5 was the cognitive trait of “Tolerance of ambiguity,” which had negative correlations with Items 4, 12, and 15: “I was tense when using a computer,” “I was always concerned with the other's pace,” and “I was sometimes afraid that I was doing something wrong with the computer.” These results suggest that subjects with less tolerance of ambiguity were more likely to feel uneasy with a computer. Although 53 subjects out of 65, i.e. 81.5% of all subjects, had experiences of using computers before this study, learning a language with computers was a totally new experience to them, and they were often puzzled as to how to tackle a new machine as well as some of the software. For success in learning English with a computer, some tolerance of ambiguity seems to be needed.

Factor 6, “Preference for group work,” had positive correlations with Item 6, “I think I would like English more through CALL” and Item 9, “I was happy because I was not required to answer questions in front of class.” This means that the more subjects tended to like group work rather than private work, the more positive they felt toward CALL. This is an interesting result because the hypothesis was that people who would like private work would also like CALL because using a computer appears to be an individual activity. However, as shown in the results, subjects who tended to prefer group work had a positive attitude to CALL while those who tended to prefer private work were less positive to CALL. This appears to relate to the nature of CALL sessions, in which students often needed to consult with one another when anything was unclear. Those students helping one another may have an advantage especially in the early stages of CALL.

5. CONCLUSION

This study attempted to explore the characteristics of those Japanese EFL learners who would benefit most from computers. The study was particularly interested in identifying the motivations and attitudes of those students who reported that they somehow benefited from CALL. For this purpose, 65 college students with various majors and levels of English proficiency served as subjects. They were asked to answer two kinds of questionnaires before and after five CALL sessions. In addition, the subjects were asked to take an English proficiency test called CELT. The pre-session questionnaire was designed to find the students’ motivation in learning English and to elicit their general attitudes toward language learning, computers, technology, people, and so on. As a result of factor analyses, six factors were found to be useful for this study. The post-session questionnaire included such statements as “CALL was fun because it was just like playing games,” and “I was tense when using a computer,” and rating scales of 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). The results indicated that the subjects were more or less positive to CALL.

The following points were noted: Female students reacted a little more positively to CALL than their male counterparts; the lower a subject’s age, the more positively he/she reacted to CALL; impression ratings of both with and without computer experience groups were not significantly different; and the subjects’ English proficiency did not seem to correlate with their reactions to CALL.

In addition, in order to find the personality factors which significantly related to students’ ratings of the CALL sessions, correlational studies were employed between six factors extracted from factor analyses and the results of the post-session questionnaire. There were some interesting implications. First, even those students who have little interest in science and technology can be attracted by CALL. In this study, there was not a significant correlation between students’ attitudes toward CALL and their interest in science and technology. Second, extroverted students are likely to have the positive view that their English will improve using computers. Students actively involved with people may be able to help one another when anything is unclear. Third, students with more integrative motivation in learning a foreign language are more likely to find CALL interesting. Fourth, students likely to be interested in novel things may tend to like CALL. Fifth, tolerance of ambiguity appears to be necessary especially in the early stages of CALL. It is always possible that students are puzzled by new computer models as well as new computer software. Finally, students preferring group work tend to prefer CALL while those who prefer private work tend to have negative attitudes toward CALL. This relates to the second implication: Helping one another may be one of the most important strategies to be needed in CALL, especially at the early stages.

This study focused only on the students’ first reactions to computer usage in language learning. Without an instructional goal for the sessions, the study is “preliminary” or “exploratory” in its nature. In actual implementation of CALL, teachers should take the broader context in consideration and find the most appropriate use for CALL as an integral part of the entire curriculum. The present study suggests some initial considerations to CALL curriculum development.

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