In this paper the authors present some of the results of a research into the influence of information and communication technologies (ICT) on foreign language (FL) teaching. The survey was conducted on a sample of 255 FL teachers (N= 255) in the Republic of Croatia. The teachers are eployed at primary and secondary schools, or at universities, and they teach six different FLs. The vast majority possess a PC at home and/or work, and have access to the Internet, but less than half teach FLs in classrooms equipped with a computer. The starting hypothesis was that the increase of the time teachers spend on their computers and the Internet would lead to the increase in their ICT competences. The results of the study have confirmed the authors' hypothesis: Correlation quotients have shown that there is a positive statistically significant correlation between the amounts of time spent using ICT and the attitudes of FL teachers regarding their own assessment of competence for the successful application of ICT in the FLs teaching. The analysis of the results presented in the paper mainly focus on correlations between the amount of time spent using ICT and the teachers' self-assessments of their 12 different computer competences and the evaluation of their experience with ICT equipment and software.
Mobile language learning applications, such as Duolingo and Memrise, have enabled virtually everyone to autonomously learn numerous foreign languages. This paper is based on a research into opinions and practices of students from the Faculty of Teacher Education of the University of Zagreb in Croatia, who have used the aforementioned applications to learn at least one foreign language. The responses were mostly positive: respondents were very interested or highly interested in learning a foreign language (83.6%), they liked the gamification quality of the foreign language applications (80.1%), they learned how to use them quickly or very quickly (85.4%), and they liked the fact that they can use the applications whenever and wherever they want (77.6%). On the other hand, only 24% of respondents completely agreed with the statement that they would be able tolearn a foreign language using one or more such mobile applications. A follow-up research proposed in order to encompass other mobile learning applications, and to ascertain whether the high motivational factor would remain constant notwithstanding the repetitive nature of the exercises provided by these applications.
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