Acceptance and Barriers of ICT Integration in Language Learning: In the Context of Teacher Aspirants from a Third World Country

Technology plays an important role in 21st century education. In equal importance, its role is also striking in the field of English language learning. However, to ensure the effectiveness and efficiency of its integration, major stakeholders such as students who are directly influenced by technology incorporation in their learning process must foster favorable attitudes toward it. Hence, it is important to examine learners’ level of technology acceptance, barriers that hinder ICT incorporation, and variables that could influence it. Nevertheless, there is a scarcity of literature that delves into the case of language major prospective teachers from the Philippines, a linguistically heterogeneous third world country. Therefore, the present study, by adhering to descriptive and quantitative approaches, surveyed a total of 92 language major aspirants from all years, whose ages ranged from 19 to 23. One questionnaire consisting of two dimensions (acceptance and barriers of ICT integration) with a reliability score of 0.927 was adopted from the study of Hashemi et al. (JAMA 9:1–20, 2022). Hence, this study reveals that aspirants who are language majors have a ‘positive attitude’ toward ICT integration in language learning. Moreover, the study also discloses that internet-related issues prevail as the primary barrier that could hamper their intention to utilize ICT tools. Furthermore, in terms of the association between their acceptance and gender, the study reveals that the latter does not influence the former. The analyses of the results are further deliberated in the study.