Internet in the classroom

The main goal of the research was to examine the contribution of an internet environment embedded with metacognitive instruction on students' reading comprehension, motivation and metacognitive awareness. The participants were 52 students who studied in two eighth-grade classes randomly selected from one junior high school and assigned to one of two conditions: (a) internet group - exposed to metacognitive instruction embedded in an internet classroom; and (b) control group - exposed to metacognitive instruction embedded in a regular class. Results indicate that although the internet environment contributes significantly to the motivation of the students towards the study of English as a foreign language, no real contribution was found regarding actual improvement of achievement in the area of English reading comprehension and metacognitive awareness. The theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed