The Effectiveness Of Mobile Application-based College Vocabulary Learning

As an indispensable part of language learning,vocabulary learning not only plays an important role in communication but is also regarded as the foundation of language knowledge.However,English vocabulary learning is a big headache for most Chinese students,so it is not hard to see a growing number of educators and scholars seek for effective learning methods in English vocabulary acquisition in their research.Meanwhile,the advancement of mobile technologies has made the innovation in teaching activities become a reality in recent years.More researchers have adopted mobile phones into their studies about vocabulary acquisition.However,only a few empirical studies were conducted at home,in which combined vocabulary acquisition with word memorization application.This paper aimed to use a mixed-method design including both quantitative and qualitative method to investigate the following questions:(1)How do non-English major students perceive the target mobile word memorization application,BBDC?(2)Is English vocabulary learning via mobile word memorization application more effective than learning through wordlist for non-English major college students?To answer these questions,a total of 175 non-English major freshmen from two intact classes under the same teacher in Shenzhen University participated in this experiment.They were randomly assigned to two groups,control group with paper list of words and experimental group via BBDC.The performances of two groups before and after using the target mobile word memorization application—BBDC and paper list of words respectively were recorded and compared.In addition,the questionnaire and interview about their perception of BBDC and their learning process in the experiment were conducted in experimental group to investigate their perceptions of mobile memorization application.All the quantitative data was analyzed by SPSS20.0.The results showed that most students were willing to learn vocabularies via mobile word memorization application,which proved the potential of mobile applications as learning and teaching tools.As to them,convenience and vivid example sentences as well as review mode of BBDC app were greatly useful and effective.However,students held that BBDC app could only be regarded as a complementary tool of paper medium and classroom teaching.Besides,the performances in posttests indicated that using applications could enhance the gains of vocabulary learning better than via paper medium.It verified the effectiveness of mobile word memorization applications in English vocabulary learning to some extent.However,this superiority in experimental group did not remain a week later in delayed posttest.It might be the decline of motivation when they finished the cet-4 a week before.The current study also gave some implications to EFL vocabulary learning and teaching.Firstly,teachers should make students aware of the benefits of mobile learning and give students some guidance to use mobile devices properly to take advantage of their fragmented time.Moreover,teachers can adopt some attracting features of mobile word memorization applications in the class to inspire students' motivation to learn English words actively and effectively.For students themselves,they need to make a vocabulary learning plan first and finish it on a daily basis.