USE OF UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY IN LEARNING ENGLISH FOR ACADEMIC PURPOSES

This case study aims at revealing EAP (English for academic purposes) learners’ experiences in and perceptions about using ubiquitous computing technology. Data were collected through interviews carried out with eleven people being prepared for the foreign language (English) exams for academic purposes in a private language course in Turkey. Fifteen open-ended questions were involved in face-to-face interviews. Data were collected through the audio recordings of interviews and then examined by content analysis method, and afterwards, codes, categories and themes were obtained. The findings of this study revealed that all of the participants were continuously and actively using ubiquitous computing technologies, they thought ubiquitous computing technologies had several advantages in learning English for academic purposes such as continuous and permanent learning, quick access to information, preventing waste of time, and interacting with other learners. However, some disadvantages and limitations of ubiquitous computing technologies such as technical and infrastructural problems, information pollution, and inadequacies in translation of terms were also tackled.

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