“THINK(ING) OUTSIDE THE BOX”: RECONSTITUTING THE PEDAGOGIC PERSPECTIVES OF M-LEARNING TO FOSTER CULTURAL AND COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

M-Learning or Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL), a successor to Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) is one of the most recent trends in Collaborative Language Learning where language facilitators are harnessing the technological mobility and user-friendliness of technical gadgets to restructure the curriculum, approach and objective of language learning. Developed by the Stanford University learning lab in a Spanish learning program in 2001, there has been a consistent interest regarding the scope of MALL in language classrooms as language teachers, curriculum developers and technical experts have been exploring its potential in effective situated learning and fostering “intercultural communicative competence” among learners (Byram, 1997). With innovations in internet enabled mobile phones and its mass availability, MALL is being seen as the future of language learning where mobile phones, presently a platform for delivering contents will participate in retention, utilization and honing linguistic talents of the learners.A step ahead of CALL, MALL foregrounds a smart, mobile, ubiquitous approach and calls for effective content designing and appropriate teacher-training to ensure maximum student competency. Easily downloadable educational apps, free e-books, e-libraries and academic podcasting form an integral part of MALL- but the real problem that has been identified is the lack of appropriate course design and effective teaching methodology to channelize the vast resource that an internet enabled mobile phone gives access to. In a Beginner’s Guide to Mobile Learning in ELT, Amy Lightfoot explores opportunities for learning English by using mobile phones both inside and outside the classroom- targeting both productive and retentive capacities of a language learner. My article seeks to explore ways how the language classrooms can be redesigned at intermediate and advanced levels with a change in the teaching content, instructional methodology and evaluation techniques. The target is to sculpt the content, methodology and evaluation techniques (taking into account the unavoidable technical and pedagogical challenges) to utilize the smartness of new-generation mobile phones in the scheme of developing linguistic and communicative competence among learners and espouse a sense of cultural awareness, thereby establishing a “sphere of interculturality” (Kramsch, 1993).