An analysis of mobile applications for language learning: principal characteristics

Abstract

Mobile learning and its equivalent specific to language education, Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL), have been the subject of increasing attention and study in connection with the rapid technological development and widespread use of mobile devices. This thesis examines a specific aspect of MALL, namely smartphone applications for language learning, with the aim of identifying the characteristics of the most used ones. The theoretical background and the literature review are presented in the first part, while the second part focusses on the study, in which 51 language learning applications were analysed, examining how languages are learned and taught and looking for correspondences with language learning approaches. The applications were analysed through a survey instrument consisting of 32 questions, which included a wide range of criteria such as assessment and instructional focus, motivation and feedback. The starting point for this study was the analysis carried out by Heil, Wu, Lee and Schmidt in 2016 on mobile language learning applications; however, the present study is not a complete replication, since many aspects are added or adapted to suit the considered research questions. For this reason, the results are discussed both in connection with the current research questions and in comparison to the results of the above-mentioned 2016 study. Results show that the main instructional focus of the analysed applications remains the teaching of vocabulary in isolated units, thus showing that there is still a distance from a more communicative approach to language education.