Evaluating Impact of Mobile Applications on EFL University Learners’ Vocabulary Learning – A Review Study

摘要

Mobile applications thanks to their unique features (e.g. portability, multimodality, interactivity, or ubiquity) are nowadays widely used in higher education, including learning English as a foreign language. In comparison with traditional learning in classroom settings, the approach to learning via smartphones/mobile apps is, on the one hand, very learner-centered in the sense of autonomous and personalized learning. On the other hand, it requires responsible and initiative students who want to improve their academic achievements. The purpose of this review article is to evaluate the effectiveness of mobile applications on EFL university learners’ vocabulary learning in order to discover whether ELF mobile apps have a significant, moderate, or no effect on the enhancement of learners’ vocabulary. The methodology of this paper is based on a literature search of available studies on the research topic, i.e. on the effectiveness of mobile applications on EFL university learners’ vocabulary learning, in the world’s databases Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The search covered the period from 1 January 2017 till 31 July 2020. After a thorough review, eventually five research studies were selected on the set inclusion and exclusion criteria. The findings of this review indicate that mobile apps are effective, useful and suitable learning tools for the retention and practicing of new vocabulary. In fact, they enable repetition of the traditional class instruction based on the following presentation mode:input-interaction-feedback. However, the mobile apps were used as an additional support to the traditional instruction and only in two studies, they were used independently. The findings also reveal that only guided and controlled implementation of these apps can lead to an effective learning process. Future research should employ rigorously designed empirical studies, especially as far as their methodology is concerned.