Using ICT to contact the target culture: teachers’ view

Abstract

While information and communication technologies (ICT) have made speakers of and content from the target foreign culture easily accessible to learners and teachers alike, they may cause conditions for FL teachers. This study sought to uncover the nature and extent of FL teachers' use of ICT to contact the target culture, both for instruction and teachers’ informal lifelong learning. By means of a survey, interviews and a mini-group interview with students, we portrayed the FL teachers' knowledge, beliefs, context, and behaviour in terms of ICT, and scrutinized how they are related. Findings showed that while teachers and students are sufficiently ICT-skilled and equipped, informal exchanges on the Internet are the exception. Excerpts from the interviews are presented in association with quantitative results.