The Effect of Digital Literacy on Language Ability in Higher Education: Experience From a Developing Country

Abstract

The digital literacy abilities of several developing countries are already promising. Indonesia is one of them. In fact, in the industrial revolution 4.0 era, students are agents of change to have good digital literacy skills in facing multidimensional challenges and prospects in the future. This research itself focuses on the influence of the existence of digital literacy on Indonesian language skills. Ten Respondents of Institut Technology of Sepuluh Nopember 2021 Urban and Regional Planning Students were sampled to prove this through quantitative research using survey methods and user tests. Respondents with a high duration of using social media to represent digital literacy show high Indonesian language proficiency test results. Meanwhile, respondents with a reasonable period of social media use showed more volatile results due to the influence of several other variables. Overall, a high level of digital literacy can improve one's Indonesian language skills. From this, it can be seen that digital literacy among students is critical in the future, especially in enhancing their Indonesian language skills.