The use of digital technology in foreign language learning

Conclusion

The current study has discussed the high school students’ perceptions of technology- based English language learning as well as their perceptions of teacher’s support in that process, with a special focus on the impact of gender, grade level and EFL achievement

on both. Some general conclusions can be drawn from the obtained results, namely (1) high school students are very positive about the use of technology and teacher’s sup- port in the process of foreign language learning (2) gender has no significant effect on the students’ use of technology and teacher’s support in the process (3) the students’ grade level significantly impacts their perceptions of teacher’s support in the process of technology-based learning, while it does not significantly impact their perceived use- fulness of technology (4) on the contrary, students’ EFL achievement does not have a significant effect on their perceptions of teacher’s support, while it significantly impacts their perceived usefulness of technology.
The current study findings emphasize the need to raise teachers’ awareness of the support to be given to students to help them increase their self-directed usage of tech- nology, particularly so outside the official school environment. The education system should follow this development and adequately respond to it and systemic reforms need to be made. This can only be addressed with an adequate, systemic, long-term, feasible and sustainable approach to media and information literacy in the educational system of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Due to the fact that the data for this research were collected at the time when the teaching process was completely online-based and very much affected by the ongoing Covid 19 pandemic and taking into consideration that such a situation will persist at least to some extent, this kind of research displays originality and innovativeness and has a potential to provide some novel perspectives and solutions to the ensuing problems in the social and cultural space of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Still, there are some limitations in this research which should be properly addressed in any further research in this field. Firstly, the sample of only high school students limits the possibility of making in-depth comparisons with primary and university-level education. Secondly, the focus of the current study is the use of technology and teach- er’s support in language learning, English language learning in particular, and some of the key factors impacting both might differ across different fields. In some other fields, different types of teacher’s support might be more relevant.