Students’ Attitudes towards Self-Access Learning Materials in the Department of English at Tlemcen University

Abstract

Nowadays, the technological revolution paves the way for learners to find a rich variety of facilities, known as self-access learning materials, to help them acquiring easily any foreign language, especially English. The main objective of this research work was to explore third year ‘licence’ students’ attitudes and perceptions towards the use of self-access learning materials and their contribution to the development of students’ proficiency level. For this purpose, a questionnaire was addressed to forty five EFL university students while another one to twenty two EFL teachers. The results revealed that, learners were aware of the existence of these materials as they had positive attitudes towards them. They stated that these materials were a way for broadening their cultural backgrounds, acquiring vocabulary knowledge and improving their four language skills. Moreover, they asserted that these facilities may help them to increase their proficiency level for better achievement in their academic context. Furthermore, findings demonstrated that teachers encourage their learners to use these materials by orienting them to specific resources a nd mentioning their benefits. In addition, they assumed that they supplemented their lectures with such materials to maximize learners’ motivation and lead them to become more autonomous. To sum up, enhancing students to use self-access materials may foster their autonomy which is considered to be crucial for their academic success at tertiary level.