Attitudes of Urban and Rural EFL Learners towards E-learning of English: Digital Divide in Pakistan

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate digital divide and examines the difference in the perceptions and preferences of urban and rural English language learners of Pakistan from attitudinal framework. The quantitative approach was used in a study and the data was collected using an e-learning attitude scale. Stratified random sampling method was used to select the participants for the current study. The sample size was 440 English language learners among them 159 were urban and 281 were rural EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. These learners were studying Function English course as part of their degrees of BS 1 and BS 2 at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro, Pakistan. Since the normality value in this study was less than .05 and it used an ordinal scale, therefore, a non-parametric test “Mann Whitney U test’ was used to know the differences instead of parametric test “t-test”. The overall findings of the study reported that majority of learners, belonging to both groups i.e. urban and rural, showed positive attitudes towards e-learning. However, no significant difference was found in the e-learning attitudes of urban and rural English language learners of Pakistan.