Do Language Learning Apps Really Work?

Abstract

With the rapid development of the mobile application market and the growing size of the foreign language learning population, learning a new language with an app can be said to be one of the most popular language-learning trends of the 21st century. At the same time, contemporary language learning applications sell themselves as innovations, in many ways that are just a return to Skinner's teaching machines as introduced in the 1950s. Technology is the 21st century, but the theories of learning are firmly 20th century. App designers must catch up to 21st-century theories of learning if they genuinely want to introduce ground-breaking tools. This work mainly analyzes why we will not make as much progress as we expected if we continue to pair 21st-century technologies with outmoded perspectives on learning and what are the up-to-date theories that will help make fundamental transformations in language learning applications.