Towards the construction of a field: The developments and implications of mobile assisted language learning (MALL)

Abstract

There has been little review research with regard to the latest developments of mobile assisted language learning (MALL) research and its implications for professionals in this emerging field of information technology applied to language teaching and research. Hence, this work aimed to review a number of studies that investigated the effectiveness of using such mobile devices to facilitate language learning, teaching, and research. As well as providing an overview of previous research related to MALL, this review article also presents some practical implications for both educators and researchers who intend to use mobile devices in their classrooms and studies. The investigators of this review study searched the available literature published in the ISI Web of Science using keywords and reviews of titles and abstracts, and obtained a total of 24 mobile learning (m-learning) articles. After the data collection process, the researchers used text-mining techniques and adopted the m-learning task model (Taylor et al. , 2006) to categorize and analyze these 24 journal articles in order to examine developments and trends in MALL. Results show that the majority of researchers aim to identify the effectiveness and efficiency of MALL by using newly developed mobile devices, such as smart phones and iPads, and while these approaches are generally considered beneficial, they also present some challenges to users, academics, and teachers. To conclude, more research is needed to further investigate the communication that occurs among learners with the use of various mobile devices, and their developments of various cognitive learning domains.