DIGITAL LITERACY AMONG YOUNG LEARNERS: HOW DO EFL TEACHERS AND LEARNERS VIEW ITS BENEFITS AND BARRIERS?

The present study aims to explore perceptions of young learners and EFL teachers towards benefits and barriers of digital literacy. Eight young learners and five EFL teachers took part in this qualitative study. In-depth semi-structured interviews were employed to collect qualitative data. The results depict that there are benefits and barriers of digital literacy for young learners in learning English. The benefits of digital literacy include improving young learners’ writing, reading, listening, and speaking skills, getting used to authentic materials, increasing frequency of digital technology use, enhancing online collaboration between teacher-learners and learners-learners. However, this study reports that digital literacy also has some negative impact for young learners. Problems with weak signals which affect difficult internet access still remain a problem. Contents of online digital materials are not easy for young learners to interpret and convert into simple, self-regulated information. Moreover, digital literacy tools are considered to be expensive. These barriers might be influenced by other problems such as complexity of digital literacy tools, different comprehension levels among young learners, young learners and EFL teachers’ lack of digital literacy experiences. In conclusion, the results give valuable insights in how to go about integration of digital literacy tools for young learners.