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The Effect of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) on University Students' Immediate and Sustained Vocabulary Acquisition

Lari, Zahra | 2013

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: English
  3. Document No: 44365 (31)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Languages and Linguistics Center
  6. Advisor(s): Alemi, Minoo; Anani Sarab, Mohammad Reza
  7. Abstract:
  8. Mobile phones as new addition to information and communication technologies have created new ways to help learners in the process of foreign language learning in general and vocabulary learning in particular. Due to the importance of academic vocabularies for university students, this study set out to investigate the effectiveness of SMS on Iranian university students’ academic vocabulary learning and retention and to explore their attitudes towards SMS vocabulary learning. To this end, 52 university freshman students at upper intermediate proficiency level were chosen to take part in this study. Before the study in order to assess the participants’ vocabulary knowledge, a list of one hundred words from AWL (Coxhead, 2000) was administered to students the result of which led to the selection of words to be taught to students and to be used as the post-test and delayed post-test. During 16 weeks of experiment, the participants of the experimental group (N = 28) were taught 520 head words from the AWL (Coxhead, 2000) via SMS. During the same period of time the participants of the control group (N=24) were taught the same words by using dictionary. At the end, both groups were given a vocabulary test to compare the effects of the two approaches of vocabulary learning on their vocabulary learning. In addition, four weeks later they were administered a delayed post-test to test the effect of the two approaches on their vocabulary retention and the scores of the two groups were compared employing an independent t-test. While there was not any significant difference between the two groups in the post-test, the experimental group outperformed the control group in the delayed post-test. Moreover, the participants of the experimental group were asked to complete an attitude questionnaire based on which they had positive attitudes toward MALL-assisted vocabulary learning. The result of this study can have pedagogical implication for language teachers, in that they can use SMS as a useful way to help their students to retain vocabularies in their long-term memory
  9. Keywords:
  10. Vocabulary Learning ; Word Retention ; Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) ; Academic Word List

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