Language Learning in the 21st Century

2022 ◽  
pp. 802-820
Author(s):  
Debbita Ai Lin Tan ◽  
Bee Choo Lee ◽  
Malini Ganapathy ◽  
Shaidatul Akma Adi Kasuma

Kahoot! is a gaming system designed for interactive learning and can be utilised for students of all ages. The present study involved two groups of Malaysian ESL students (n = 57) enrolled in a remedial English proficiency course in a public university. All 57 participants were exposed to weekly Kahoot! sessions over a period of one semester; the sessions covered various English language learning components including vocabulary and reading comprehension, but focused largely on grammar. At the end of the semester, the participants completed a 34-item questionnaire comprising closed- and open-ended items. The questionnaire was tested for reliability with returned values indicating high internal consistency, thus making the instrument a reliable option for use in future studies. The study's findings indicate that the students found Kahoot! to be beneficial in terms of: 1) inducing motivation, and 2) fostering and reinforcing learning. The students were also of the opinion that Kahoot! would be useful for foreign language learning (for instance, Spanish and French).

Author(s):  
Debbita Ai Lin Tan ◽  
Bee Choo Lee ◽  
Malini Ganapathy ◽  
Shaidatul Akma Adi Kasuma

Kahoot! is a gaming system designed for interactive learning and can be utilised for students of all ages. The present study involved two groups of Malaysian ESL students (n = 57) enrolled in a remedial English proficiency course in a public university. All 57 participants were exposed to weekly Kahoot! sessions over a period of one semester; the sessions covered various English language learning components including vocabulary and reading comprehension, but focused largely on grammar. At the end of the semester, the participants completed a 34-item questionnaire comprising closed- and open-ended items. The questionnaire was tested for reliability with returned values indicating high internal consistency, thus making the instrument a reliable option for use in future studies. The study's findings indicate that the students found Kahoot! to be beneficial in terms of: 1) inducing motivation, and 2) fostering and reinforcing learning. The students were also of the opinion that Kahoot! would be useful for foreign language learning (for instance, Spanish and French).


2021 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 109
Author(s):  
Tran Quoc Thao ◽  
Nguyen Hoang Chau Long

Reading plays a vital role in improving second/foreign language learning as it can encourage the development of autonomous learners. Furthermore, ESL/EFL learners’ use of reading strategies can be affected by their learning motivation, which can result in the high or low frequent use of reading strategies in reading comprehension. The present study, therefore, investigated the motivation in English language learning and the use of reading strategies among English-majored freshmen at a university in Bac Lieu province, Vietnam. A questionnaire was used to collect data from 180 English-majored freshmen, six of whom took part in semi-structured interviews. The results showed that participants had a high level of motivation in English language learning, and their metacognitive strategies worked better with their reading comprehension than their cognitive and social/affective strategies. The study further unraveled that the more participants were motivated in English language learning, the more they employed metacognitive and cognitive strategies in reading comprehension.


Author(s):  
Inmaculada Garnes-Tarazona

Second language teaching and learning has experienced a change towards the use of mobile technologies inside and outside the classroom. The goal of this article is twofold: to compare and evaluate three different commercial English language learning apps (Duolingo, Babbel, and Busuu) that cover the four skills (speaking, writing, listening, and reading), and to analyze the learning theory supporting their design. These applications include in their homepage the option of interactive learning with friends. However, as this article shows, each app offers a different level of interaction and collaboration. The theoretical framework for this analysis is grounded on Vygotsky's Socio-cultural theory.


2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (9) ◽  
pp. 17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yee Chee Hong ◽  
Malini Ganapathy

Malaysians have long realised the importance of being competent in English as one of the success factors in attaining their future goals. However, English is taught as a second language in Malaysia, and it is not easy to teach under such a foreign context, because authentic input may not exist beyond the classroom, especially in Chinese private schools. In this scenario, English is learnt as a subject with 10 sessions per week, which is considered insufficient for students to master the language effectively. Past research highlights the significance of motivation in English language acquisition. Motivated students tend to put in more effort in their academic endeavours by showing more persistence in their learning process. The purpose of the study was to identify and analyse whether instrumental or integrative motivation plays a more important role in promoting Form Four ESL students’ English language learning. Furthermore, examine the areas of problems that affect ESL students’ motivation towards English language learning. This study was a qualitative case study that used focus group interviews to elicit data from 12 students in a secondary school in Penang. The findings of this research indicate that students are more instrumentally motivated than integratively motivated in ESL learning. Instrumental motivation is found to have a greater impact on students’ English language learning. This research also highlights that vocabulary and grammar are the biggest areas of problems that are encountered by students during their ESL learning process, which further influence their speaking and writing skills.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-37
Author(s):  
Heydy Robles ◽  
Kevin Burden ◽  
Karen Villalba

Mobile devices are increasingly promoted as tools to facilitate ubiquitous and individualized learning, allowing learners to work at their own pace in authentic and meaningful settings. However, in the case of second language learning, there is a paucity of apps and tools related to improving students' reading comprehension in both Spanish and English. Additionally, there are few studies that address the evaluation of applications for reading comprehension and innovation in this field and this is required in order to respond to the needs of transformation in language learning teaching. The authors present an original evaluation of 25 English language learning mobile apps using the iPAC app rubric, which identifies the pedagogical features of mobile learning: personalisation, authenticity, and collaboration. The results indicate that many of the existing apps fail to fully exploit the affordances of mobile learning and collaboration in particular. The findings suggest recommendations for app developers to design comprehension apps that address these shortcomings.


2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jing Hu

Following the recent evolution of research perspectives toward student silence, an increasing number of studies have sought to empirically probe into the beneficial role of this variable in students’ success. Yet, a limited number of review studies have been carried out to illustrate the complex nature of student silence and its positive consequences (e.g., success, increased learning outcomes, etc.). Hence, this study aims to review different definitions of “student silence” to elucidate its facilitative function in EFL/ESL students’ success. Providing empirical evidence, the role of student silence as a facilitative element in English language learning was proved. Finally, some pedagogical implications for EFL/ESL teachers and teacher trainers are also discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-9 ◽  
Author(s):  
Musarat YASMIN ◽  
Ayesha SOHAIL

Learner autonomy has been a focus of research for last three decades. Not only the nature of phenomenon was investigated but also its role in foreign language learning attracted researchers’ interests. The present paper examines the mutual creative relationship between learner autonomy and target foreign language acquisition. Following an interpretive paradigm, this qualitative study used semi-structured interviews to explore the beliefs of 16 university teachers of English language teaching in four public sector universities of province Punjab, Pakistan. Results revealed a close creative connection between learner autonomy and English language learning. Teachers believed that autonomy in learners accelerates language learning. Major aspects of learner autonomy were reported fulfilling the perceived needs of foreign language learning. The study implied that fostering of autonomy in learners accelerates target language proficiency.


2021 ◽  
Vol 03 (05) ◽  
pp. 29-33
Author(s):  
Zainab NAZZEE

Despite of the many changes in the English language learning curriculum in Iraq, teaching English to school students is not just challenging but rather unsuccessful in terms of creating pupils with both a good competence and an accurate performance. The learning process is being replaced with a merely passing one grade to another process with the blessing of no serious effort to locate and solve such a problem,which would result in an illiterate generation in an English language oriented cultures. There are many reasons for such a problem,one of which is the tendency of most English language teachers to treat content of the curriculum as a structure based material, also there are other factors like; the repetition of the same grammatical rules through our the different stages of school years and the predictable questions used,even in high school final exam.Therefor I would like to propose a three –step plan to overcome these difficulties.The first step is to design a functional based curriculum which presents no syntactical rules in the early years of learning English language but only concentrates on communicative and interacting skills. The second step is to use " pedagogical wheel " as a course given in college in a pre-training program for teachers, the third step of our model is to create a reference in the Ministry of Education to connect with all English teachers and provide updated information, advises,aids and share experience among them. Keywords: Pedagogical Dimension, English Language, Learning Curriculum


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