Innovation in Language Learning

Digital technology has a profound effect on drawing the boundaries of English language teaching (ELT) today. Therefore, for the past few years, Turkey has been initiating to reform teacher education programs in technology-assisted language learning (TALL). Adding two obligatory computer courses in teacher education programs in faculties of education, The Council of Higher Education (1998) aimed to upskill teacher candidates through these courses in developing basic technological skills or using instructional technologies irrespective of their fields of study. Despite this favorable framework, a gap in the literature has been found in relation to Turkish pre-service EFL teachers’ digital literacies (DL) to date. Therefore, this study was conducted with a perspective of examining a group of pre-service EFL teachers’ practices in relation to their digital literacies. The participants were 24 pre-service teachers of English foreign language (EFL) teachers who took an undergraduate-level course during the 2018-2019 academic year in the Department of Education at Dokuz Eylül University and they were to take 14-week DL training in relation to language teaching. The questionnaires given to the participants in order to determine their perceived knowledge of digital tools, self-efficacy levels in digital literacies and use of digital tools, beliefs in technology in language teaching and a wide array of documents including reflection papers on articles, reflective papers on practice, field notes and the transcribed data showed that the training helped the participants to develop digital literacies in relation to language teaching especially. More specifically, the data revealed that the pre-service teachers underwent a digital, perceptual, cognitive and attitudinal change in technology infusion into language teaching after the training.

Keywords: Technology-Assisted Language Teaching, Pre-service EFL teachers, Digital Literacies, Technology Integration, Digital Tools.