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ABSTRACT
The rapid growth of digital technology has transformed teaching vocabulary in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), university students have begun employing online resources to study words on their own. In Vietnam, vocabulary websites, online dictionaries and interactive platforms provide learners a helpful substitute for classroom instruction for many learners. Teachers’ perspectives on the educational usefulness of these tools are, however, not explored extensively. This investigation attempts to fill that gap by studying Vietnamese university EFL teachers’ perceptions of the efficacy, advantages and limitations of internet vocabulary learning materials. With a convergent parallel mixed methods approach, quantitative data was obtained using questionnaires from 60 teachers; data were derived from 12 semi-structured interviews with academics. Descriptive and correlational analyses revealed macro-behavioural trends in general and thematic analysis investigated teachers’ perceptions. Results showed that teachers regarded online resources to be supportive for increasing student vocabulary, independence and motivation. However, issues include inconsistent learning behavior, poor digital literacy, and poor self-regulation among students. The authors found that teachers have a pedagogical influence when implementing digital tools and monitoring students’ progress and connection between online activities and curricular aims in a successful web learning scenario, in the end the effective use of technology in a web learning activity to students will not be possible without careful instruction and not with the use of technology alone.
Keywords: web-based vocabulary learning; EFL; teachers’ perspectives; mixed-methods research; Vietnamese higher education
