Student views on learning grammar with web- and book-based materials

This paper reports on a study which examined students’ attitudes to learning grammar in autonomous contexts and their preferences for the learningmaterials with which to do so. In all, 38 students were surveyed and 13 of these then spent some time working in a language resource centre (LRC) with weband paperbased materials. Students then completed a series of questionnaires concerning what they liked and disliked about the two types of materials. Four participants were then interviewed inmore detail about their responses. The data suggest that despite the well-documented advantages of the tutorial role of computers and the notion of the ‘digital native’, participants generally preferred working with paperbased materials. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of this for materials that LRCs stock and for the changing role of computers in self-study contexts.