This research investigates students' perceptions of digital technology usage and whether a year of English language learning incorporating these technologies in a university course influences their learning attitudes. 135 participants completed questionnaires at the end of the first semester and 125 at the end of the second semester. Findings indicate that participants' attitudes toward digital technology usage appeared to shift, irrespective of their English language proficiency. However, students' attitudes towards digital technologies varied based on their English proficiency level. Lower proficiency students were more engaged in English learning via digital technology, while those with higher proficiency seemed to favor traditional paper-based learning materials. The study proposes that teachers' practices and attitudes towards digital technologies could affect students' mindsets and the observed changes.

This paper discusses whether technology-based performance tasks could be a mediator to communicating in English and enhance language learner engagement. Through the research, this study investigated how low-proficiency Japanese English-language learners could change their attitude toward communicating in their target language by completing a performance task that involved making and presenting a digital portfolio. The students had to mediate between themselves linguistically and contextually when completing the performance task. The study adopted two types of questions in a questionnaire: one type involved a three-point Likert scale and the other included open-ended questions about the performance task. Thirty-three students in the first and twenty-eight in the second semester completed the questionnaire. The data from the open-ended questions were analyzed qualitatively from a phenomenological research perspective. The students’ comments on the task showed that they positively engaged in the performance task throughout the two semesters by reflecting on themselves as English learners, with some difficulty mediating themselves in L1 and L2.