What to Consider for Effective Mobile-Assisted Language Learning: Design

Implications from an Empirical Analysis

Heyoung Kim, Chung-Ang University, Seoul,

Korea

WORLDCALL 2013, July 11-13, Glasgow

Listening Reading Writing

Watch-ing

Movies

ZZZ

Talking throug

hSNS

Check-ing

email

Reading a news-paper

Playing a game

Global Mobile Statistics

• Two largest app store, Apple App Store and Google Play sell over 800,000 apps.

• 800-1000 apps out of them were introduced for lan-guage learning.

•  Downloads of apps in 2013 range from 56 to 82 billion. In 2017, there could be 200 billion downloads.

•  One in four mobile apps once downloaded is never used again.

From MobiThinking report, May, 2013 http://mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats

 

Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-ing (MALL)

What is an effective mobile app design for language learning?

What is effective mobile-as-sisted language learning

(MALL)?

MALL

• CALL ? or MALL?

Some unique features distinguish MALL from other types of computer-based learning. The success of MALL depends on whether or not MALL curriculum and material developers understand the nature of mobile learning and make the most effective use of MALL technology. (Kukulska-Hulme & Shield, 2008).

Anytime and anywhere

Mobility

WORLDCALL 2013, July 11-13, GlasgowWhat to Consider for Effective Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-

ing:

Mobile-Assisted Learning (mleran-ing)

Effec-tive

Mobile Lean-ing

Mobility of Tech-nology

smartphone, digital cameras, hand-held computer (eg. tablet

PC, PDA), GPS, other mobile devices (ex. i-

Pad)

Mobility of Learner

- engaged in flexible, accessible, and person-alized learning activities.

- can develop sense of individuality, commu-nity, and ubiquitousness in learning,

Mobility of Learning

- personalized, learner-centered, situated, collaborative, ubiquitous, lifelong

- knowledge reconstruction based on social trust in social process

Summarized by previous studies (El-Hussein and Cronje, 2010; Kukulska-Hulme, 2007; 2009; Sharples, 2006; Sharples, Taylor & Vavloula, 2005; Ting, 2005; Traxler 2007)

Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-ing (MALL)

• Effective MALL enables students to more easily and more promptly access language learning ma-terials and communicate with people at anytime, from anywhere.

• Effective MALL facilitates students’ participation in both collaborative and individualized language learning activities synchronously and/or asyn-chronously allowing rapid development of language skills

• Effective MALL provides various resources and tools for language learning that encourage learners to be more motivated, autonomous, situated (site-specific/field-dependent), and socially interac-tive.

Analytical Framework of MALL (Kim & Kwon, 2012)

Content/Design Target Target Learners (age, interest, proficiency level)

Content (topic, organization, content size)

Learning styles (recognition, recall, comprehension, experiential learning etc)

Learning strategies (field-(in)dependent, deductive/inductive, collaborative/ individual )

Procedure & Approach (Pedagogy and SLA)

Activities (instructional, individual, facilitative)

Focus (linguistic, language skills, sociolinguistic)

Technological Features

Multimedia (- videos/ graphics/Sound/Music/Resolution Size )

Exploitation of mobile potential (Other functions, Web 2.0 features)

1

2

3

• ‘judgmental’ analysis of software evaluation

• Revised Hubbard’s software review criteria, “Integrated Framework for CALL Courseware Evaluation” (1988, 2006, 2011)

Analytical Framework of MALL (Kim & Kwon, 2012)

Common features

• The majority of applications deals with short language data in-formation vocabulary lists (42%) or short grammar lessons (12%)

• Most of them require cognitive language learning style This approach is very close to cognitive CALL (Kern &

Warschauer, 2000). • ESL apps employ various modes and functions of multimedia for

personal, perceptual, and field-independent learning • Their L2 approaches are not diverse and remain in the form-

focused instruction. Two dominant methods are audio-lingual and task (test)-

based.

Analytical Framework of MALL (Kim & Kwon, 2012)

Strengths

• provide a personal and learner-centered learning op-portunity with ubiquitously accessible and flexible resources and activities.enhance L2 learners’ motivation and autonomy in

MALL

Weaknesses

• They are weak in realizing mobility as a more situated, field-dependent, and collaborative learning opportunity.

• More active use of authentic context, socially interactive tasks, timely and situated materials (ex. podcasting) is needed.

• The present apps facilitate personal learning, but do not ef-fectively assist personalized learning.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-ing (MALL)

• Judgmental vs. empirical evaluation

Are they the same or different?– What apps do L2 learners actually

choose for MALL?– What do they evaluate the current ESL

mobile apps?

The purpose of this study

This research intends to• evaluate the Smartphone app content

and design with the empirical data from L2 learners who have utilized mobile apps for language learning

• to suggest implications for mobile app design for effective MALL.

Research Questions

• What content and design of mobile applica-tions did the college EFL learners select and use? And why?

• How did they study? What L2 activities and approaches did they prefer and enjoy for what purpose?

• What factors of the mobile apps affected the students in continuing or quitting MALL?

Method: Participants & Pro-cedure

• 22 sophomore or junior Korean students at a university• English proficiency varied from low intermediate to high in-

termediate. • voluntarily attended the MALL workshop (1 hour, introduced

26 ESL apps) and decided to participate for this project• used Smartphone applications for learning English

on their own choice for one semester • weekly reported their use through SNS

Weekly Student log How did you use apps this week? Please

write about your use. 1) where 2) how long 3) what apps 4) in what way.

Method: Participants & Pro-cedure

• 22 sophomore or junior Korean students at a university• English proficiency varied from low intermediate to high in-

termediate. • voluntarily attended the MALL workshop (1 hour, introduced

26 ESL apps) and decided to participate for this project• used Smartphone applications for learning English

on their own choice for one semester • weekly reported their use through SNS

26 ESL Apps introduced in MALL Workshop

Word & grammar(8) News & Broadcast(6) Stories(6) Test Prep(7)

• Smart words

• Words to learn by

• Idiom attack

• Practice your Eng-

lish grammar

• Grammar express

• English grammar in

use

• English grammar

• TED

• CNN

• NYT

• Good morning pops

• iListen

• One touch listening

clinic

• Dracula

• Alice in wonderland

• A+ English

• Fluent English

• Big city Small

world

• College girls voice

blog

• Public speaking

speech prep

• IELTs speaking suc-

cess

• TOEIC listening

• Scott’s English Suc-

cess Listening

• Prepare for TOEIC

• 1000 TOEIC Test

• Kaplan TOEIC Vo-

cabulary

Weekly Student log How did you use apps this week? Please

write about your use. 1) where 2) how long 3) what apps 4) in what way.

Method: Participants & Pro-cedure

• 22 sophomore or junior Korean students at a university• English proficiency varied from low intermediate to high in-

termediate. • voluntarily attended the MALL workshop (1 hour, introduced

26 ESL apps) and decided to participate for this project• used Smartphone applications for learning English

on their own choice for one semester • weekly reported their use through SNS

• 22 sophomore or junior Korean students at a university• English proficiency varied from low intermediate to high in-

termediate. • voluntarily attended the MALL workshop (1 hour, introduced

26 ESL apps) and decided to participate for this project• used Smartphone applications for learning English

on their own choice for one semester

Method: Participants & Pro-cedure

MALL Work-shop

Pre-sur-vey

Recruiting partici-pants

weekly log

weekly log

interviews

Post sur-veyinterview

6 weeks 7 weeks1 hours

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

Method: Data collection

• pre-& post survey (X)• weekly student logs (O)• semi-structured interviews with

19 students (O)

Method: Data Analysis• qualitative, triangulation across data sources and

individual students• used the same analytical framework as

Kim and Kwon’s ‘design and evaluation

criteria for mobile-based ESL apps’ (2012)

Findings & Dis-cussion

WORLDCALL 2013, July 11-13, GlasgowWhat to Consider for Effective Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-

ing:

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Light

Easy (i-1)

Short Requiring less concentration

Audio, video materials for simple listening or reading rather than vocabulary or grammar

• I usually listen because my English is not good.

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Examples) push news service, podcasting episodes, video clips, talks

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Light

Various topics

Various functions

Various(many) units

Latest news, podcasts, talk series

Various

Various

Various

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Examples) popup-news, podcasting episodes, short videos, talks

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Light

Bilingual script, dictio-nary More powerful audio controller

Customized notepad, my page

Drama, episodes, talks, newsVarious

Various

Various

Story-

basedScaffold-ing

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Examples) popup-news, podcasting episodes, short videos, talks

• Speed controller would be great.

• It’s too fast, so it’s difficult. The speed should be slower.

• TED is as fast as CNN. So the speed should be slower or I should be able to listen and stop sentence by sen-tence.

• It would be good to have the repetition function by pause.

• I want to listen next to what I had listened, but I need to go back from the beginning. I need a sort of bookmarking.

• I want to listen to the audio both with and without a script.

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Examples) popup-news, podcasting episodes, short videos, talks

“Good Morning Pops” (Korean ESL app)

Screen English

Pop Music English

Short Expression Drill

Daily Vocabulary

Speed control

Very Powerful audio controller

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

Light

Interesting life story

New information

content, knowl-edge

Drama, episodes, novel, music, UCC, talks, newsVarious

Various

Various

Story-

basedScaffold-ing

Discussion 1: What content and design of mobile applications did they select and use? And why?

• I haven’t read a English books before. But this one…I can read because it has a story. Usually a (pa-per) book has many texts in one page, but book apps… in fact, there aren’t many texts in one page, so it wasn’t boring. I prefer Smartphone apps for read-ing…. I can read two chap-ters in 10-15 min.

• GMP is just fun. A new story everyday. I don’t have to study.. just listen.

Discussion 2: How did they study? What L2 activities and approaches did they prefer and enjoy for what purpose?

Audio-

lingua

l

Method

-drill

-repet

ition

- memo

rizati

on

input building, flu-ency development

Many users were looking for better audio control device for repetition to focus more on individual forms.

Discussion 2: How did they study? What L2 activities and approaches did they prefer and enjoy for what purpose?

Indivi

dual

MALL

-No SNS

-No web

2.0

input building, flu-ency development

Resistance to col-laboration or com-munication for lan-guage learning

• I did not use SNS in CNN apps be-cause I don’t think people will read ar-ticles that I sent there.

• I don’t use ‘scrap’ or ‘favorite' be-cause I am not going to read them again. It’s unnecessary.

• I don’t tag it to my FB because it is open to all my friends. They should see something unnecessary for them.

Discussion 2: How did they study? What L2 activities and approaches did they prefer and enjoy for what purpose?

MALL a

s ‘ex-

tra’wo

rk

-Saving

time

-Additi

onal

study

input building, flu-ency development

Resistance to col-laboration or com-munication for lan-guage learning

The virtue of MALL =‘extra’ work’ or ‘saving time’.

• I feel like I am doing something during wasting time (commuting time)

• I don’t intend to use apps for serious study..not the major purpose of my English study..I am utilizing my little spare time

•It’s additional.. I feel it’s better anyway for me to do one more extra thing. So I don’t feel any pressure.

Discussion 3: What factors of the apps affected the students in continuing or quitting MALL?

★Lar er e n

motivation

★ Language difficulty of the apps

Life pattern

Learning Style

Discussion 3: What factors of the apps affected the students in continuing or quitting MALL?

Learning Style

★ Language difficulty of the apps

March~ April May ~June

9

5

ESL listening10

ESL listening

5

10

15

# of Students (total=18)

13

The students started with authentic listen-ing, such as CNN news and later selected linguistically less challenging ESL listening.

Discussion 3: What factors of the apps affected the students in continuing or quitting MALL?

★ Other engaging elements • timely field-dependent • authentic

Top 5 most frequently used apps

1. CNN

2. TED Talk

3. Good Morning Pops

4. Big City Small World

5. iListen

• New timely contents (information or stories)

• Authentic-based• field-dependent

Discussion 3: What factors of the apps affected the students in continuing or quitting MALL?

★Lar er e n

Life pattern

motivation

Learning Style

★ Language difficulty of the apps

★ Other engaging elements • timely field-dependent • authentic

Conclusion: Effective MALL?

• Effective MALL enables students to more easily and more promptly access language learning materials and communicate with people at any-time, from anywhere.

• Effective MALL facilitates students’ participation in both collaborative and individualized lan-guage learning activities synchronously and/or asynchronously allowing rapid development of language skills

• Effective MALL provides various resources and tools for language learning that encourage learn-ers to be more motivated, autonomous, situ-ated (site-specific/field-dependent), and so-cially interactive.

Conclusion:Judgmental analysis (2012) vs. Empirical

analysisCommon features in ESL Apps Common MALL pattern

short language data in-formation vocabulary & grammar

short language data infor-mation listening & reading

cognitive language learning style cogni-tive CALL (Kern & Warschauer, 2000)

cognitive language learning style cognitive CALL (Kern & Warschauer, 2000)

various modes and func-tions of multimedia for personal, perceptual, and field-independent learning

various modes and functions of multimedia for personal, per-ceptual, and field-depen-dent learning

not diverse L2 ap-proaches the form-fo-cused audio-lingual and task (test)-based

not diverse L2 approaches audio-lingual and content-based

ConclusionThe unique feature of MALL

= subway-time study = extra work ?

= individual ?

= easy (i-1)?

Their preference of MALL content, style, or design seemed a little deviant from the concept of effective MALL in the previous literature

Some implications for ESL app con-tent developers

• Satisfy ‘light’ principles• Add a sufficient scaffolding device• Keep language difficulty i-1 • Provide field-dependent and updated con-

tents• Suggest as many individual options as pos-

sible• Highlight meaning rather than language

Q & A

WORLDCALL 2013, July 11-13, GlasgowWhat to Consider for Effective Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-

ing:

Thank You!

Heyoung Kimenglishnet@cau.ac.kr

Heyoung’s CALL Notecallheyoung

WORLDCALL 2013, July 11-13, GlasgowWhat to Consider for Effective Mobile-Assisted Language Learn-

ing: