Kısa hikaye ve bilgisayar-destekli dil öğretimin birlikte kullanılmasının öğrencilerin motivasyon düzeyi üzerindeki etkisi

TLanguage learning motivation which is considered as one of the fundamental affective factors in the process of language education tends to change in the course of language teaching and learning due to a number of factors. Of these factors, language teaching and learning materials are identified as one of the primary reasons for this change. Short stories and computer technologies serving as two of the most commonly used language teaching and learning materials are perceived to have tremendous effect on students? language motivation level. Although the use of short stories and computer technologies in language teaching and learning dates back to many decades ago, the incorporation of these two devices into each other in the process of language education is a rather new research area to be explored.Grounding on the notions stated above, the present experimental study investigated the impact of the integration of short stories into computer technologies on students? second/foreign (L2) language motivation level. The study further explored effect of gender differences, frequency of computer use, computer self-efficacy perception and frequency of reading short English stories on the L2 motivation level of students.The study was conducted with 65 first-year students studying at the ELT Department of Dicle University in Diyarbakır, Turkey. Since a ?pretest-posttest control group? research design was employed in the study, the students were randomly assigned to the Experimental Group (N=35) and Control Group (N=30). After receiving their pretests (questionnaire adapted from Gardner?s AMTB), the Experimental Group students carried out a two-month long study in which they read three short stories written by well-known authors and did a variety of activities ascribed to the stories via computers, whereas the Control Group students did a number of activities via using traditional language teaching and learning materials. Completing the two-month long study, the groups were given the posttests (questionnaire and semi-structured interview).The statistical analyses of the quantitative data (questionnaires) carried out by SPSS 17.0 yielded a significant difference between the groups on the posttest, revealing an increase in the Experimental Group students? L2 motivation level whereas a decrease in the Control Group students? L2 motivation level. A comparison of the pretest and posttest data within the groups also showed significant differences in terms of L2 motivation level. That is, while the L2 motivation level of the Experimental Group students showed an increase on the posttest, the L2 motivation level of the Control Group students indicated a decrease on the posttest. The statistical analysis of the data also pointed out that the aforementioned factors had no significant effect on the L2 motivation level of the students except for computer self-efficacy perceptions on the pretest of the Experimental Group. The content analysis of the qualitative data (semi-structured interviews) also reported similar findings to the quantitative data, thus casting further light on the effectiveness of the trend in which short stories are integrated into computers.The analysis of the quantitative and qualitative data revealed that the integration of short stories into computers had positive impacts on the motivation level of language students. Consequently, the use of the integration of short stories into computers in the process of language teaching and learning is considered to serve effectively as it provides authentic and multifaceted learning environments in which students feel encouraged and motivated.