Enabling effective mobile language learning: Students’ perspectives, wants and needs

Abstract

This chapter presents learner perspectives on the pedagogical use of commercial mobile learning applications for acquiring Asian and European languages at an Australian university. It contributes to this book by addressing one of the key organising questions: What are the different ways of conceptualising, identifying and evaluating mobile learning initiatives in higher education in the region? Specifically, it utilises the student perspective from the ‘pedagogical’ level of the Mobile Learning Evaluation Framework, whereby students were co-partners in an inquiry that focused on evaluating how mobile devices and applications could be used for learning foreign languages. It aims to build a better understanding of students’ emerging mobile learning practices and preferences in the Asia-Pacific region through learners’ own evaluations and experiential accounts in learner-determined contexts. Over three iterations of an undergraduate class (2011–2013), language students selected and actively evaluated current and emerging technologies for their potential for assisting language acquisition. Simultaneously, students were encouraged to gain pedagogical intelligence (Hutchings, 2005) about themselves as learners and how they were taught languages. Increasingly, students selected mobile devices and commercial applications as the focus of their evaluations. In pairs or individually, 63 students created a total of 36 radio-style podcasts to share their discoveries with language teachers. Approximately 25% of these students were from Asian countries such as China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam. This chapter presents the perspectives of regionally diverse and pedagogically intelligent learners on enabling effective mobile language learning. Their wants, needs and recommendations are summarised for institutions, teachers, learners and mobile learning application developers in the Asia-Pacific region who are seeking to enable effective mobile learning.