Impediments to Gauging ICT-Based Informal English Learning Outcomes

Abstract

This chapter is a product of the impediments to measuring ICT-based informal learning in the Saudi EFL context. It unravels difficulties of measuring the outcomes of informal English learning with a particular reference to informal technology-based activities. It succinctly discusses why it is difficult to design, develop, implement, and sustain a comprehensive approach to assessing ICT-based informal English learning outcomes. The major problems surfaced from this discussion included absence of theoretical background of this evolving mode of learning, unawareness of recognizing linguistic, and inability to control the informal ICT-based activities for they are arbitrary and difficult to expect and measure by ordinary tests. Thus, there is a need to adopt alternative assessment tools such as portfolio, progress tests, and self-reporting within a new paradigm shift towards learner-centeredness.

Informal Digital Learning of English Vocabulary: Saudi EFL Learners’ Attitudes and Practices

“…The term IDLE, in this paper, was used after Lee and his coauthors in numerous studies (Lee, 2019a(Lee, , 2019b(Lee, , 2020Lee, Xie & Lee, 2021;Lee & Drajati, 2019;. IDLE was studied under different titles, including out-of-school digital English (Sundqvist & Wikström, 2015), out-of-school exposure to English (Peters, 2018), English beyond the language classroom (Lehtonen, 2017), extramural English (Sundqvist, 2009), and informal learning (Al-Kadi, 2020;Bin-Hady & Al-Tamimi, 2021;Hezam, 2020). Informal learning is defined as autonomous learning, which is unstructured and naturalistic.…”