Abstract:
Sri Lanka has a proud heritage of free education from primary to tertiary levels and a
youth literacy rate of 98%, a feat of which any middle-income country can be proud.
The Sri Lankan government has taken steps to integrate ICT education into the school
education curriculum since the year 2006. With a mission to drive ICT literacy in Sri
Lanka forward, 4500 schools have been provided with ICT infrastructure for studentcentred
ICT learning. Teachers at local schools have been given a comprehensive
training in all aspects of using ICT tools in the classroom. In addition to the initial
training provided by the Ministry of Education, government-school-based ICT
teachers are also being provided with continuous assistance in developing a
pedagogical approach to ICT training through the Intel Teach Programme. This study
investigated how ICT facilitates teaching of English vocabulary: the ways teachers
use ICT in teaching English vocabulary and the problems that hinder teachers from
using ICT in teaching English vocabulary. The design of the study was a survey; the
area of the study was the Western Province with 1250 primary teachers selected as the
sample. Three research questions guided the study, with a 24-item questionnaire used
to collect the data. Mean scores were used to analyse the data. The findings revealed
that though teachers supported the use of ICT for English vocabulary development,
teachers do not use ICT in teaching English vocabulary. They identified problems that
hinder their use of ICT in classroom instruction, including poor finances to procure
computers and other relevant equipment; slow and frustrating network connectivity;
unreliable power supply; limited access to computer facilities; and lack of computer
skills among teachers and pupils.
