This presentation explores the incorporation of digital technologies in the teaching of English as a foreign language (TEFL) at the level of secondary education in Bulgaria. More specifically, it looks at the role digital technologies (platforms, tools, devices and resources) play in the process of TEFL by investigating the attitudes and pedagogical practices of 25 teachers who teach English as a foreign language in secondary schools located in different parts of Bulgaria. The current study draws upon empirical data collected from the teachers in the period between December 2024 and February 2025 through an online interview and in-person observation of classroom practices and analyzed through a mixed methodology blending qualitative and quantitative techniques. Whereas the aim of the interview data collection tool was to capture the informants’ attitudes towards the incorporation of digital technologies in TEFL, as well as their views on the role they play and should play, the observation data collection tool was aimed at checking the extent to which their pedagogical practices related to teaching English rely on the incorporation of digital technologies. The results emerging from the analysis of the interviews bring to the fore the teachers’ positive attitudes towards the usage of digital technologies in the English language classroom. In their opinion, digital technologies serve important functions such as facilitating the acquisition of language skills, giving more authenticity to the learning process or increasing students’ motivation. The findings from the analysis of the observation data support the positive attitudes the informants demonstrate in the interviews and suggest that they employ digital technologies in the classroom for a wide range of educational goals such as providing support to the teaching of new educational content, assessing language knowledge and skills, as well as establishing pedagogical communication with students. In addition, the results indicate that digital technologies play two main roles in relation to the informants’ pedagogical practices: replacement and amplification. Indeed, they replace traditional means of teaching English (e.g. using an electronic textbook instead of a print book) and enhance the effectiveness of pedagogical practices (e.g. using digital technologies to provide students with faster and more diversified access to authentic materials for language learning). In relation to these results, an argument is made that digital technologies should serve an even more central, transformative role with respect to teachers’ pedagogical practices, that is, they should not just replace or enhance practices, but they should also transform them and take them to a new dimension. The presentation ends by suggesting possible ways of assigning a more central, transformative role to digital technologies in the process of TEFL.

Keywords: Digital technologies, teaching English as a foreign language, attitudes, pedagogical practices.