Use of English beyond the classroom wall: a study of undergraduate students' out-of-class English learning activities

Abstract

The principal objective of this paper is to find out and discuss about the experience of 60 undergraduate students have regarding out of class activities. This paper will focus on some important issues like do they have motivation to involve in out of class activities, what kinds of motivation do they have, how much autonomy they have and how it works, what language skills they are expected to use inside and outside the class, what is their present level of four skills of English language, what are the barriers they face during out of class activities, how they overcome those barriers, which activities and domain is more common and it also look upon how multimedia plays role in out of class English language learning. To make this research more authentic I have collected some information from three private universities. I have prepared a questionnaire which consists of qualitative and quantitative questions for the students. From that I have found out that English plays a vital role in their life. Most of them practice it outside the class but more in private domain rather than public. Multimedia plays an important role in their life like movies, Facebook, Online NEWS, dictionary in mobile phone etc. There are some students who think teacher is the best source of learning and there is no adequate environment of learning English outside the class. However, for most of them to dealing with out of class activities is an interesting experience.