Is There any Relation Between Better English Knowledge and higher Internet Gratification A Small-scale Study in EFL Context

The internet, once regarded as the virtual world, has now become a crucial part of our actual life. Further,today the internet constitutes a major instructional resource for language learning. Thus ones quality of experienceswith internet is likely to bear on their language learning attitudes and outcomes. That said, how people make sense oftheir experience with internet, whether they feel frustrated, elated, disillusioned, confused, or gratified hinges on arange of contextual and individual characteristics. Given that English is the dominant language on most web pages, onesuch characteristic likely bearing on internet gratification (IG) is knowledge of English. This study probed into thepossible relationship between IG and English proficiency. To this aim, 39 participants with varying degrees of Englishproficiency filled out a questionnaire measuring IG. The data were analyzed using ANOVA as well as descriptivestatistics. Overall, the results did not reveal a significant relationship between proficiency in English and IG, thoughparticipants at the intermediate level appeared to be slightly more gratified with their experiences with internet.Possible explanations for the outcomes and implications for life-long language learning are discussed.

Keywords:

Proficiency , English , Internet , Gratification