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both boys and girls, online socializing makes girls particularly vulnerable, and online gaming and Internet Cafés hurt only boys academic achievement
Chen and Fu, 2009: 1. As Internet provides wide range of information and resources, the uses of
Internet for academic purposes in English language education are for searching English materials, looking for English teaching and learning lessonsmaterials,
downloading English teaching and learning toolssoftwares, as medium of teaching and learning activities such as giving students’ web-projects or tasks to post writing
assignments, giving feedbacks or comments, providing on-line English language courses, collaborative learning, and on-line language learning research.
2.1.6 Difficulties of Using Internet for Academic Purposes
In regard to students who use the Internet for academic purposes, there are several difficulties which might be faced by the students, such as lack of formal
training on how to browse the Internet, lack of the knowledge of web sitessearch engines to use in searching for information in the Internet, lack of the knowledge of
how to use the computer effectively, lack of time in searching for information in the Internet, slow speed of the Internet access, and disinterestedness on the part of some
of the students. Students also reported difficulty in finding what they needed when using the Internet to search for information and also determining the reliability of
information. As cited by Vajdieh et al. 1999: 2, “Tillotson et al. 1995 found that students had limited success in finding the information they searched for on the
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Internet, with 46 percent finding nothing they were looking for, and only 23 percent finding at least a satisfactory amount of needed information”. Vajdieh et al. 1999: 3
also mentioned that the lack of success in Internet information retrieval and the predominance of
e-mail usage could point to a need for Internet-related training on college campuses. Cannon 1996 found that only six percent of students surveyed
reported having formal training in Internet use. Kaczor and Jacobson 1996 also found that the majority of users 54 percent learned the Internet by
themselves, while only 14 percent reported having formal instruction on Internet use. Similarly, Lubans 1998 found that 88 percent of student
respondents learned to use the Internet mainly by surfing on their own Vajdieh et al., 1999: 3.
In general, from the difficulties in Internet searching for academic purposes mentioned above, most of the students faced difficulties in efficiency and
effectiveness of Internet searches. The majority of the students learned to use the Internet by themselves. The students were lack of the knowledge in browsing, using
search engine for searching information, training in using Internet. There were too much or complicated information in Internet and students needed to spend a lot of
time for searching information in the Internet. Those reasons caused unenthusiastic in using Internet for academic purposes. Salaam and Adegbore n.d: 2 quoted that
Nwokedi 2007 posits that lack of searching skills is still hindering good use of Internet. He asserts that acquisition of Internet skills can lead to discovery
of valuable research and teaching resources, which would in turn cause the users to use the Internet to enhance their research and learning capabilities.
Internet access ability would be expected to stimulate regular use of the Internet and minimize the perceived barriers to its use Salaam and Adegbore,
n.d: 2.
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2.1.7 Perception
