English

Malini Ganapathy,Siti Norbaya Azizan,Munir Shuib

doi:10.17576/3l-2016-2201-10

Abstract

With the proliferation of mobile technologies nowadays, English language educators and instructors globally are increasingly looking into the potential of mobile learning as pedagogical practice to teach the language, including as a tool to test students’ grammatical ability. However, users’ perception on the usability of such advanced approach in education is critical to a successful mobile learning implementation. While there is a considerable enthusiasm for incorporating mobile technologies in English language education, there is a paucity of research evidence about whether mobile-based test is perceived as usable by English language students in Malaysia. The purpose of this paper is to examine Malaysian English as a Second Language (ESL) students’ perception on the usability of a mobile application for grammar test; namely MyGrammarTest (MyGraTe) App. The App was developed by a mobile learning research team from Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) who studied the development of an intelligent mobile learning tool that can map grammar learning content to their learning style preferences. Upon successful development, the MyGraTe App prototype was piloted on a group of undergraduate students who undertook ESL courses in USM. Then, a questionnaire consisting of items adapted from the System Usability Scale (SUS) by Brooke (1986) was distributed to respondents to gain input on the perceived usability of the App. Findings from this study provide several important insights on the usability of mobile applications as learning support tools for English language learning, specifically in testing students’ grammatical ability. Keywords: mobile learning; mobile application; MyGraTe; English grammar test; System Usability Scale DOI: http://doi.org/10.17576/3L-2016-2201-10

Highlights

The education system in Malaysia aspires to prepare students holistically to allow them to succeed in the 21st century, with all of the opportunities and challenges that this new era presents
More than half of total respondents (55.1%) were taking the English for Professionals course, 25.6% the Bachelor of Education (TESOL) course, 11.5% the English Language and Literature Studies (ELLS) course, and the remaining 7.7% the English Language Studies (ELS) course
This study investigated the usability of a mobile application, namely the MyGraTe App as a tool for English as a Second Language (ESL) students in Universiti Sains Malaysia to test their grammatical level

Summary

Introduction

The education system in Malaysia aspires to prepare students holistically to allow them to succeed in the 21st century, with all of the opportunities and challenges that this new era presents. In order to compete with the best in the world, the education system is targeted at developing young Malaysians who are knowledgeable, can think critically and creatively, have leadership skills and are able to communicate with the rest of the world (Malaysia Education Blueprint 2015) In this vein, particular emphasis is placed on enhancing students’ learning experience by leveraging on technology-enabled models to enable more personalised learning in the higher level learning classrooms as teaching digital age 21st century students requires adaptive and technological induced methods by educators (Ganapathy 2015). Discussing the effectiveness of using mobile applications in the learning of a second language, Burston (2011) highlights that behaviorist, teacher-centered theories can supplement and assist in the development of mobile phone applications for student-centered vocabulary

Objectives

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion