The Implementation of Digital Literacy in EFL Learning: A Case Study in SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Temanggung

As technology continues to grow rapidly, there is an explosive development in digital tools and million pieces of information. Digital literacy, a new concept of literacy has offered to process the information in meaningful ways. Educators have struggled to integrate digital literacy to raise students’ literacy skill across languages. Thus, there is an increasing expectation and demand for English teachers to present digital literacy in the classroom. A major study has studied the implementation of digital literacy in an urban school with high-advanced technology facility. Therefore, an effort to investigate the practice of digital literacy in suburban school is pressingly needed. The study was conducted to reach four aims: (1) to investigate the implementation of digital literacy in SMP Muhammadiyah 1 Temanggung; (2) to identify teachers’ attitude in practicing digital literacy, (3) to explore the challenges, and (4) how to cope with them. This article involved two EFL teachers who were regarded as millennial teachers and capable to utilize technology. A qualitative research was used to explore the real practice of digital literacy. The excerpt were obtained through a semi structured interview and classroom observation. The result indicated that computer and smartphone were used as digital devices. In practicing them, teachers showed positive attitudes by considering the syllabus as a core, understanding a teacher’s position, developing effective learning, using multiple literacy and enhancing the four language skills. Meanwhile lack of technology, students’ background, lack of time and limited budgeting are considered as obstacles in implementing digital literacy. Thus, as a strategy, teacher set an early preparation and backing up plan to cope with these challenges. Finally, this article has implications to improve the technological facility, technological pedagogy among teachers, and suggest the policy makers to give more consideration toward digital literacy