Swedish teachers’ and students’ views on the use of ICT in the English classroom

Abstract: This thesis aims to explore whether some Swedish teachers and students feel that they are helped by ICT tools in their classrooms or not. It is vital for this thesis to find out whether or not teachers experience that their students are positively stimulated by the use of ICT when learning English. Ascertaining whether teachers find that ICT tools make it easier for them to teach or not is also of particular interest. Students’ answers to questions regarding the perceived benefits of technology and what they think about their teachers’ technology usage are also important. In order to accomplish this aim, four teachers were interviewed about their opinions on this matter and one English class per teacher, totaling 70 students, answered questionnaires regarding their opinions on the matter. The results reveal that teachers believe that while ICT offers some great tools to create variation in the classroom and that it might increase student motivation, opinions on whether or not technology also helps students to produce better results differ. The students’ results on the other hand clearly show that most students believe that they learn better when using computers, they would like to use computers more during class, and they prefer to write using a computer rather than pen and paper. Overall, the students have a more positive attitude to ICT tools than the teachers.