The Effect of Students' Gender on the Interface between CALL and Students' Autonomy

This paper tries to show the effect of Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) on Iranian EFL learner’s autonomy. It also explores the effect of students' gender on the interface between students' autonomy and CALL. 60 intermediate students from two intact classes of a language institute in Tehran participated in this study. They were assigned as control and experimental groups. A Proficiency Test was administered to the participants of both groups to guarantee their homogeneity. During the CALL-based treatment each participant in the experimental group had an access to a computer in the English lab. The quantitative data gathered through a five-scale Likert questionnaire was analyzed using ANCOVA and independent T-Test on SPSS 18.0. The method of this research was a quasi-experimental (Nonequivalent Comparison) with pretest and posttest. The results of this study demonstrated that the application of CALL had a significant effect on the improvement of students' autonomy and it also indicated that its effects on girls were more than boys. Therefore, CALL appeared to be useful in developing autonomy of EFL learners specially girls. The findings of this study can benefit EFL students and teachers, materials developers, curriculum designers and assessment specialists.

کلیدواژه ها:

CALL ، Learner Autonomy ، Iranian EFL learners