Students’ Perceptions of an EFL Vocabulary Learning Mobile Application

Abstract

Mobile devices have penetrated all spheres of human activities, including education. Previous research has shown that smartphones are becoming widely used in learning as they can improve knowledge retention and increase student engagement. The purpose of this study was to discuss students’ perception of the use of a mobile application aimed at learning new English vocabulary and phrases and describe its strengths and weaknesses as perceived by the students. In total, 28 university students answered a pen and paper questionnaire survey after experiencing the app during one semester. Overall, the students’ agreement to the positive aspects displayed in the questionnaire prevailed over their disagreement or neutral opinions. The mobile app helped students prepare for the final achievement test, learning was accessible from anywhere and at any time, students appreciated the corrective feedback and would opt for the implementation of the mobile app in other courses taught at the faculty. On the other hand, as the findings indicate, the students reported that the app was not very supportive regarding communication performance; they did not find the teachers’ notifications encouraging and they did not use the pronunciation support much, which was caused by various factors, such as offering students words and phrases without context or not testing all the items in the final credit test. The findings of this study contribute to the existing knowledge of students’ perceptions of the use of mobile apps for learning purposes.

Mobile-assisted and gamification-based language learning: a systematic literature review

“…The results presented by studies for the applications of pedagogy, reading, pronunciation, writing, listening, speaking, grammar outperformed the control group. It may be concluded that mobile applications for vocabulary learning have a positive impact on language learning in which pupils from the experimental group outperformed the control group except (Klimova & Polakova, 2020) (Ishaq et al, 2020b) where the students and teachers mentioned they are not satisfied with the design, content, assessment methods adopted in the applications besides pronunciation support and teachers' notifications were also missing. Gamified applications are proposed for vocabulary learning (Sandberg, Maris & Geus, 2011) (Sandberg, Maris & Hoogendoorn, 2014) (Wu, 2018) (Chen, Liu & Huang, 2019) (Fisser, Voogt & Bom, 2012), Spanish language learning (Holden & Sykes, 2011), Idioms (Amer, 2014), Vocabulary, Grammar, and Sentence Structure (Tsai et al, 2016), and Tenses, Words, Sentences (Önal, Çevik & Şenol, 2019).…”

“…This application helped pupils for the preparation of final exams by learning from anywhere at any time. To discuss students’ perception of using a mobile application, this was developed based on their needs to make EFL vocabulary teaching and learning useful ( Klimova & Polakova, 2020 ).…”

“…From the reading perspective, ‘Word Capsules (short vocabulary test)’ was developed in which words (content) were selected from 10,000 words, who gripped numerous phrases in English have a vast vocabulary and able to survive with challenges of studying at a higher level in English ( Makoe & Shandu, 2018 ). In contrast, for all the viewpoints, practicing and retaining new phrases and words, ten lessons of vocabulary and ten lessons of phrases were adopted as content that the pupils have to translate to English from native language ( Klimova & Polakova, 2020 ).…”

“…It is showing by Tables 14 and 15 that questionnaire tool was used to evaluate motivation ( Sandberg, Maris & Geus, 2011 ), perception ( Hsu, Hwang & Chang, 2013 ), effectiveness ( Huang et al, 2016 ), usefulness ( Lin, 2014 ), convenience ( Wu, 2018 ), curiosity ( Chang et al, 2013 ), achievement ( Petersen, Procter-Legg & Cacchione, 2013 ), attitude ( Tsai et al, 2016 ) ( Gafni, Achituv & Rahmani, 2017 ), behavior ( Ou-Yang & Wu, 2016 ), and perception ( Klimova & Polakova, 2020 ), whereas interviews were conducted to measure the learners’ autonomy ( Hazaea & Alzubi, 2018 ), usability, scalability, reliability, and flexibility ( Makoe & Shandu, 2018 ). Few studies used questionnaire and interview (both) to see the attitude and motivation ( Amer, 2014 ), effectiveness ( Quan, 2016 ) ( Önal, Çevik & Şenol, 2019 ), perception ( Chen, Liu & Huang, 2019 ), affordance ( Ramadoss & Wang, 2012 ), usefulness, and ease of use ( Ishaq et al, 2020b ).…”

Digital educational resources for English language studies: teachers and learners’ attitude

“…Despite the methodological differences, the findings of all of the identified in two databases: Web of Science and Scopus studies showed that there was an improvement in reading comprehension after the treatment with mobile applications. In addition, a positive attitude was determined and enhanced learner motivation when using mobile apps was found in several studies [10]. Nevertheless, a great number of school teachers and university lectures are skeptical about introducing digital educational applications and they prefer not to use the educational means in their English classes.…”