The Impact Of Internet At Home On High Schools Students’ English Grades

The Impact of Internet at Home on High Schools Students’ English Grades.
Mainor Morales Villegas
University of Costa Rica

Author Note
Mainor Morales V. Student of the English Teaching Major and English Major at the School of Modern Languages of the University of Costa Rica.
This research was conducted as a requirement for the course FD-0545 Seminario en la Enseñanza del Inglés duringthe first semester 2011.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Mainor Morales V. E-mail: mhynor@gmail.com

Abstract
This paper explores the impact of students’ use of the Internet at home and its incidence regarding to the improvement of their grades in the English subject at high school. This is a comparative study that was conducted in two groups of students fromeleven level at Colegio Los Angeles de Pital de San Carlos, during the first trimester, 2011. The participants were thirty six students divided in two groups: eighteen students that have Internet at home and eighteen students that do no have Internet at home. The information gathered shows that those students that have Internet at home obtained a better average in the English subject in both groups.In addition, it also shows that these same students pass more time per week on the Internet and they also have more subscriptions to social networks that those that do no have Internet at home.
Key words: Internet, Internet at home, World Wide Web (WWW), English skills, Average.

Introduction
One of the most relevant technology developments during the last three decades has been achieved inthe field of telecommunications together with the development of computer hardware and software. In addition, the development of Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW), the multimedia section of Internet, has allowed this strategic alliance with telecommunications. Besides, it is also relevant to highlight the development and capacity of data transmission through fibre optics that has madepossible to increase communications speed highly. Moreover, the development of satellites that facilitates the wireless communications has also contributed to interconnect the world population and transform the earth in a small village. Although Internet was developed at the beginning with military purposes, some visionary people had the capacity to imagine at the time that this tool could also be usedfor academic purposes. This situation was possible because computer industry reduced the sizes of computers and consequently its price. Hence, this fact has made possible that many people around the world can have the opportunity of obtaining and having this technology at home. This situation creates great opportunities for many people as well as for different business. One of those is theeducation.
The emergence and development of information superhighways has created a huge opportunity for education that opens the door for many people. Nowadays, public and private institutions from different countries and levels are taking advantage of this technology in order to offer education facilities for million of people around the world. Nowadays, people from different regions, socialstatus, education level, and age are taking advantage of these facilities. Actually, the education on the Internet has become a billionaire business and it is growing up very fast. This situation has made that some people believe that traditional education institutions could face a real challenge during the next twenty five years as a result of the success achieved in this field nowadays. Thistechnological revolution has been made possible thanks to the fusion of computers, Internet, multimedia, and telecommunications.
The use of the Internet for educational purposes has taken many people by surprise. This technology is extremely dynamic and things change practically every day. More and more products are coming every single day into the market. New computer devices, communication...