INVESTIGATING TEACHERS’ USE OF COMPUTERS IN TEACHING ENGLISH: A CASE STUDY

In Vision 2020, Malaysia aspires to become a fully developed country by the year 2020 (The Malaysian Dream: Vision 2020). Later, the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) was announced in August 1995 to spearhead a number of nationwide IT projects that are intended to transform major sectors of Malaysian society including education using IT. One of the IT projects that was implemented was the Smart School project. Among its objectives was to prepare Malaysian citizens for the information age through an innovative education delivery process. This study specifically investigates teachers’ use of computers in teaching English as a second language (ESL) in a public school in Malaysia. It examines teachers’ attitudes, the challenges that they faced in using computers in teaching English, and their suggestions in order to overcome these challenges. Feedback gathered from questionnaires show that they faced many challenges that demotivate them from using computers in the classroom. The results of the study suggest that there must be strong support of both the instructional and administrative aspects of IT in the school so that teachers will be able to embrace IT fully in teaching English in their classroom