20
2.1.5 Internet for Academic Purposes
In higher learning, the Internet is expected to help the students in their study. The use of Internet should direct to the academic purposes. The Internet can be used
for completing course assignments, getting information, studying, and learning. Many researchers had tried to explore the use of Internet regarding to academic purposes,
for example as cited by Vajdieh, Marxen, Baird and Zelin II 1999, Tillotson, Cherry, and Clinton 1995 conducted an on-line survey at the University of Toronto
and reported that The majority of the 505 student respondents reported using the Internet for
personal use 46 percent, with only 14 percent using the WWW for research and eight percent using it to complete other course assignments. Graduate
students reported a higher usage for research compared to undergraduates. Cannon 1996 surveyed several hundred undergraduate students at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and found that 52 percent used the Internet. Of those using the Internet, 73 percent used e-mail, while only 31
percent used the Internet for research Vajdieh, Marxen, Baird and Zelin II, 1999: 2.
Another interesting survey was carried out by Chen and Fu in 2009 regarding the Internet use and academic achievement among 8
th
grade students of middle- school students in northern Taiwan. This study examined how patterns of Internet use
in the 8th grade affect students performance on their high school entrance exam a year later.
The findings confirm that online searching for information helps boost exam scores, while using the Internet for socializing and gaming, as well as going to
Internet Cafés, contribute to poorer exam performance. Male and female students differ not only in their patterns of Internet use, but in how these
patterns affect their academic performance. While information searching helps
21
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
Kategori