Teaching WELL in a Computerless Classroom

The widespread availability of the Internet has meant that the traditional CALL lab is no longer the only place where students can access and utilize web resources for language learning. University students in Japan regularly browse the web using their mobile phones. However, even though Japanese students are proficient in browsing the web in their mother tongue, they lack the skills necessary for browsing the 80% of the websites on the Internet, which are in English. In this paper, first we outline how we use the web as a resource for enhancing our English language course (WELL – Web-Enhanced Language Learning) in a computerless classroom, how we prepare our students for using English websites outside the classroom, and what the students do with the information they find on the web. Secondly, we will present the results of a study that we conducted at the end of our WELL course in order to assess our students’ attitudes towards the use of the web as a language learning tool outside the classroom and towards the web-based activities used in this course.