The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, it aims to explore the gender differences found in Chinese EFL learners' behavior on the Web and the differing attitudes toward Chinese and English websites. Second, it tries to develop students' cultural awareness through the use of a web-based itinerary on English websites. The 75 participants (36 men and 39 women) in this study came from Chinese Culture University in Taiwan. The survey and analysis are based on a questionnaire given to students after they completed a web-based itinerary. Students' ultimate task is to use the English internet website to create an English itinerary of a selected city and to obtain experiences with English websites. The questionnaire elicited measurements of (1) behavior (2) attitude, and (3) selection criteria for websites.
The results of the study were determined as follows. Men and women have significantly higher levels of participation in 'chat room' and 'downloading of materials' than in other Web activities. When gender and college type are taken into account, students have different preferences for their selection criteria. In contrast, they favor the same types of interesting websites. Although the subjects rarely had had surfing experiences on English websites, the majority do hold positive attitudes toward ongoing utilization of the worldwide web as an effective pedagogical tool because of its rich multimedia features, such as graphics, audio, video, and interactive objects. Some pedagogical suggestions are made for the effective use of computer networking for second and foreign language learning.
