Technology with its speedy great leaps forward has undeniable impact on every aspect of our life in the new millennium. It has supplied us with different affordances almost daily or more precisely in a matter of hours. Technology and Computer seems to be a break through as for their roles in the Twenty-First century educational system. Examples are numerous, among which CALL, CMC, and Virtual learning spaces come to mind instantly. Amongst the newly developed gadgets of today are the sophisticated smart Hand phones which are far more ahead of a communication tool once designed for. Development of Hand phone as a widespread multi-tasking gadget has urged researchers to investigate its effect on every aspect of learning process including language learning. This study attempts to explore the effects of using cell phone audio recording feature, by Iranian EFL learners, on the development of their speaking skills. Thirty-five sophomore students were enrolled in a pre-posttest designed study. Data on their English speaking experience using audio-recording features of their Hand phones were collected. At the end of the semester, the performance of both groups, treatment and control, were observed, evaluated, and analyzed; thereafter procured qualitatively at the next phase. The quantitative outcome lent support to integrating Hand phones as part of the language learning curriculum.
The importance of personal factors such as personality traits, learning strategies, self-esteem, and self-efficacy in the complicated task of language learning has been established for years. However, the introduction of computers, networks and their wide communication affordances, seem to impact many aspects of learning and teaching and particularly language learning and teaching. The storage place, manner, and magnitude of learning materials for example, have shifted from the human mind to portable digital storage places that consequently require different types of aggregation, retrieval, and usage of information. Noting the rapid communication of today through networking, ICT competency plays important roles with all its related applications and software that turn the talented user into an enhanced player in the wired world. It was the underlying premise of this research study to identify how freshman Iranian language students view their technology competencies and command to impact their socialization and web-assisted language learning process in the connected world of today. It was found that most of the Kazerun Islamic Azad university students of English (34 freshman) show positive attitudes toward the adoption of online learning materials and web-based socialization applications such as facebook's group tool and online forums as their preferred tool for discussion and interaction in the language learning course. At the end of semester the higher digital self-efficacy students scored higher in their conversation test compared to the lower digital self-efficacy students. Users with high computer self-efficacy not only benefit from their capability to use computer in their language learning activities, they would also benefit from group self-efficacy in their web-based language learning tasks and interactions.
Looking at learning procedure in general and language learning in particular, variations abound in learning processes and styles. Along this journey, some learners travel/move ahead smoothly and some others are faced with challenges of different sorts. Among the significant factors contributing to more effective and efficient language learning output, motivation, attitude, and personality traits play major roles. However, the role played by the intelligence seems to be critical in any language learning tasks and activities. Emotional Intelligence, which is believed to harmonize cognitive and emotional dispositions, seems to be indispensable to the interrelation between the learner's Multiple Intelligence makeup and respective preferred learning strategies. This can be used to develop materials and teaching tasks to become more or less compatible with the learners' varying preferences and abilities, thereby promoting their achievements. The findings of the study pertaining to the interrelation of students' Multiple Intelligence profile and their preferred Language Learning Strategies can be used to plan and categorize language learning and teaching tasks and materials in order to modify them more in accordance with the choice of the students. The educators might use the findings to choose from among various teaching materials to satisfy the needs of their learners with different illiteracies through conducting need analysis prior to choosing any learning and teaching content materials.
Digital media play enormous roles in much of the learning, communication, socializing, and ways of working for "Net-Generation" learners who are growing up in a wired world. Living in this digital era may require different ways of communicating, thinking, approaching learning, prioritizing strategies, interpersonally communicating, and possibly developing compensatory techniques for information gaps among other categories of Language Learning Strategies. The Net-Geners, therefore, need new skills and new strategies to perform successfully as learners and workers. This study uses a mixed-methods approach that includes concurrent quantitative and qualitative data (i) to identify the Net-Generation learner's strategy preferences based on the "Strategies Inventory for Language Learning" (SILL) categories currently considered the most comprehensive strategy inventory and (ii) to identify possible emergent compensation strategies among Net-Geners, as a comprehensive study of the strategies used by the Net-Geners is clearly beyond the scope of this article. The results indicate that compensation strategies have undergone a number of modifications and are used differently by the Net-Geners in order to compensate for their knowledge gap and to help enhance their ESL learning.
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