Preferences For The Internet-based English Learning Environments: Cognitive-metacognitive Aspect And Content-technical Aspect

Online or Internet instruction is playing a more and more important role in students' English learning. As indicated in the new College English Curriculum Requirements, the Ministry of Education in China greatly encourages and supports the use of the Web technology in college English education. Since the use of the Internet-based learning environments is one of the important trends for the practice of language education, it is necessary to probe students' attitudes toward or preferences for these environments.This study examines students' preferences for the Internet-based English learning environments, involving the cognitive-metacognitive aspect and the content-technical aspect. It also explores the role that gender, Internet experiences, English level and major have played in their preferences. Finally, the relationships between students' preferences for the content-technical aspect of Internet English learning environments and those for the cognitive and metacognitive aspect are studied and discussed.In this paper, the cognitive and metacognitive aspect includes three scales: student negotiation, inquiry learning, and reflective thinking; and the content-technical aspect includes scales of relevance, ease of use, and interactivity. The findings of the study show that students typically demand an ease-of-use and interactive Internet-based language instructional system. And there are, at least, a group of students who are not eager to engage in student negotiation and inquiry learning while learning English in the Internet-based environments. The results also reveal some differences between the present study and some previous studies on the role of gender and Internet experiences. According to the survey, English level and major play a role in the content-technical aspect of Internet English learning environments. The LISREL analysis also shows that the student negotiation scale and the inquiry learning scale are affected by all the three content-technical scales, and the reflective thinking scale is influenced only by the interactivity scale.