The Usefulness of Cell phones in Teaching & Learning Language, the latest study

J+ Kiernan+, Patrick +Kazumi + Aizawa (2004). Cell phones in task based learning - Are cell phones useful language learning tools? Cambridge University Press New York, NY, USA, 16, Retrieved 04/30/09, from http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1008784

Authors :
Patrick J: Faculty of Engineering, Department of English, Tokyo Denki University, 2-2 Kanda-nishiki-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Kiernan: 101-8457, Japan patrick@cck.dendai.ac.jp

Kazumi: Faculty of Engineering, Department of English, Tokyo Denki University, 2-2 Kanda-nishiki-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo

Aizawa: 101-8457, Japan aizawa@cck.dendai.ac.jp

The above writers at Japanese Universities are supporting the use of Cell phones in teaching language and there are new initiatives and researches conducted on Cell phones usefulness in teaching and learning language. It can be said that such initiatives are early attempts of investigation to set up steps of how educators and teachers integrate these handheld tools into classroom learning, since it is known that cell phones are wide spread all over many countries among students in different educational cycles. Indeed, Cell phones as handheld devices are now wide spread in many countries including the USA where we teach Language, are now particularly popular among university and college students, even in public schools. Although they can make distraction in the classroom, functions such internet access and email capability have transformed them into useful communication tools. Cell phones have the ability in building virtual community, such a community will be helpful in teaching language, as learners can have an opportunity to talk and discuss in the target language with the native speakers. The research started from placing the following question. Are cell phones potentially useful in language learning? While task-based approaches (Nunan, 1989) adapted to desktop email are now a growing area of research in CALL (Greenfield, 2003; Gonzalez-LIoret, 2003), cell phones have not yet received much attention. The research was done in a classroom aimed at evaluating the use of mobile phones as tools for classroom learning. The experiment was done on students from two Elementary classes and two lower Intermediate, were first surveyed regarding their cell phones use and pre-tested to assess their knowledge of certain target learning structures. The students were divided into three small groups as follows:-
Ø Group A, using cell phones text messages.
Ø Group B, using computer email.
Ø Group C, speaking.
The students were paired, trained with warm-up tasks and assigned to more tasks to complete in a classroom and the other at home. The target vocabulary appeared in the initial narrative task. All messages sent while doing the task was saved for analysis. The speaking task pairs were recorded and a few samples were transcribed for comparison. At the end of the experiment, the students took a post test in order to assess their learning gains. The experiment results drew the attention to some of potential benefits of mobile phones as well as highlighting some limitations, but in general, suggested that mobile phones represent a Language learning resource worthy of further investigations. I think that such a study will excite, stimulate and encourage many educators and teachers who concern about the integration of technologies into education, to conduct many researches and studies about the future use of cell phones in teaching and learning language. Also new application software may be needed to overcome the distraction that might happen to the teacher while receiving feedback from students. I suggested that, teachers can set up time for receiving feedback, answering questions and giving instructions for new assignment. Thus might not make any distraction in the classroom as every day new techtools become available, such as podcast & podcasting. The latest development about the usefulness of Cell phones in 2009 about teaching English language in china is quoted from BBC.
BBC “to provide English language teaching in China via mobile telephones BBC Worldwide and BBC World Service have joined forces to provide educational content for an English language teaching service via mobile telephones in China, following a historic contract signed in London today (Friday 14 March). BBC Worldwide and BBC World Service have joined forces to provide educational content for an English language teaching service via mobile telephones in China, following a historic contract signed in London today (Friday 14 March). The contract, between BBC Worldwide and Sina.com, China's largest website, will enable the 200 million mobile telephone users in China to learn English via their mobile telephones. It is the first time that an international educational content supplier has used mobile technology in this way. Users will receive a daily text message on their mobile containing a phrase in English together with the Chinese translation; they can then log onto Sina.com to listen to and read the phrase as part of a longer dialogue, and to read explanations about the language.” See: http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/bbcworldwide/worldwidestories/pressreleases/2003/03_march/elt_sms.shtml