A Study of Tertiary Teachers’ Attitudes towards Web 2.0 Technologies and their Use for Teaching EFL and ESP

During recent decades, the use of Web 2.0 technologies has grown in a number of countries at all levels of education. Research in the area has reported that these technologies enhance educators’ ability to address different student audiences and allow them to pattern their teaching styles to many different needs and skill levels in diverse teaching and learning environments, including traditional classrooms, online learning and blended learning environments. It has been also established that the success of the use of Web 2.0 technologies in education is predetermined by a number of factors, including educators and learners’ age, attitudes towards technologies, educators and learners’ acceptance of these technologies, as well as availability of technology and institutional support for teachers.
The use of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning English (including English for Specific Purposes, ESP) in tertiary education has been researched from different perspectives. However, it should be noted that the earliest studies (those published within the period 2004–2006) did not investigate English teachers’ attitudes towards these technologies, being mostly focused on the effect that they had on foreign language students’ attainment. Therefore, the contextual and psychological factors involved in the process have not been investigated.
Even though the use of Web 2.0 technologies for teaching and learning English (including ESP) in tertiary education has been studied by a number of researchers in different countries, in Lithuania it has not been investigated much as yet. The present small-scale study aims to analyse Lithuanian tertiary teachers’ (which includes university and college teachers) attitudes towards Web 2.0 technologies and their use in the process of teaching English (including ESP), to investigate tertiary teachers’ views of their own ability to use these technologies as well as to establish which of these technologies are used in their English teaching courses (including ESP courses).
The data for the present study were collected from the responses of 39 teachers of English (including ESP) in five higher education institutions in Lithuania. The investigation begins with an overview of the literature which reports on the results of previous research, followed by an analysis of the major taxonomies of Web 2.0 technologies. The research methodology as well as research limitations are then discussed. Finally, the results of this small-scale study are reported. To carry out the research, a quantitative methodology was used.