Surveying students’ recreational use of English with computers

Abstract

Students' recreational use of computers may provide important opportunities for them to learn English incidentally. This paper investigates student's exposure to English while using computers recreationally in two ways. Firstly, a questionnaire was distributed to 80 students at a Thai university to elicit how students use computers. Secondly, the English encountered by four students while using computers for one hour was recorded. The findings show that English is quite important when students use computers recreationally. The English encountered by students consisted primarily of nouns, each encountered only once. Suggestions for how to help students to deal with such exposure to a wide range of vocabulary items are given.