English Internet usage: An indicator or EFL progress

Abstract

The study attempts to prove, or disprove, the hypothesis that English Internet usage is an indicator of English progress among freshman at a Japanese university. The background to this question is the notion that students, who independently use the English domain of the Internet are highly motivated and gain fluency practice. However, it was not clear how many, if any, of the students would be using the English domain of the Internet. The evidence suggests that an unexpectedly high number of students are using the English Internet and they are, in simple mean terms, making significantly more progress than students who do not. Moreover, with the removal of the masking effect of the entertainment variable, the English domain students' mean average progress is double that of the full cohort.