Mobile applications as a tool for learning English collocations: An evaluative study

Abstract

Over the last decades several research studies in the fields of Corpus Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Language Acquisition have provided evidence for the central role of formulaic chunks, in particular collocations, in language use. Given the increasing popularity of mobile applications as tools for learning English, this study aims to find out whether such an important aspect as the teaching of collocations is given adequate space in the most popular EFL apps - Duolingo, Memrise and Busuu. In particular, the present study seeks to verify whether lexis is given priority over grammar and whether collocations are directly addressed, exploiting various types of exercises and activities. In addition, we aim to evaluate the applications’ sensitivity towards lexical chunks. Our findings show that, overall, Duolingo, Memrise and Busuu are more concerned with the teaching of lexis than with the teaching of grammatical rules. However, within the units on lexis, Duolingo focuses primarily on single words, whereas Memrise frequently addresses fixed and semi-fixed expressions, but not enough attention is paid to collocations. Only in Busuu are students directly exposed to collocations in a non-negligible way. Although Memrise and Busuu show a certain degree of lexical sensitivity, we found that lexical and grammatical collocations are still not treated as Lewis (1993, 1997a, 2000) suggests. Therefore, we conclude that collocations should play a greater role in order for mobile applications to be considered as effective tools in this respect.