Exploring undergraduate students’ exposure to extramural English activities
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33474/j-reall.v7i2.25665Keywords:
extramural English activities, higher education, language acquisition, informal learningAbstract
While digital media have made English exposure outside the classroom increasingly accessible, little is known about how undergraduate learners engage with it or perceive its contribution to their language development. Previous studies have tended to examine either the frequency and duration of extramural English activities or their relationship to language outcomes, but rarely both alongside learners' own perceptions, limiting a more contextualized understanding of informal engagement. This quantitative descriptive study addressed this gap by examining the types, frequency, duration, and perceived benefits of extramural English activities among 190 undergraduate students enrolled in a general English course at a private Indonesian university. Data were collected through a structured questionnaire and analyzed descriptively. Results showed that exposure was predominantly entertainment-oriented and digitally mediated, with listening to English songs (M = 4.31) and watching short social media videos (M = 4.20) reported as the most frequent activities, while music (M = 2.37) and online gaming (M = 2.06) accounted for the longest engagement durations. Despite this largely receptive, entertainment-driven pattern, students perceived these activities as beneficial, particularly for improving listening skills (M = 4.13) and reading skills (M = 4.09). These findings suggest that informal English exposure among undergraduates is substantial yet unevenly distributed, concentrated in accessible entertainment activities, while still perceived as valuable for language learning. This points to a need for educators to better integrate students' existing out-of-class practices into formal instruction through authentic, multimodal, and interaction-oriented learning opportunities that connect informal exposure with purposeful language learning.
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