Examining the Usage Potentials of Smartphones as a Lesson Tool in Foreign Language Teaching
Akıllı Telefonların Bir Ders Aracı Olarak Yabancı Dil Öğretiminde Kullanılma Potansiyellerinin İncelenmesi

Author : Erdinç ASLAN
Number of pages : 121-128

Abstract

One area of interest in smartphones that have been expanding in recent years is Education. These devices are particularly heavily used among young people and it added new features every day to this phones .Because of that, it is inevitable for the educators to benefit and use it for teaching purposes. Indeed smartphones began to be utilized for teaching purposes and various applications were presented to the educators and students as an auxiliary resource. Under Mobile Assisted Language Teaching, the applications prepared by educators and applications for commercial purposes are used in various ways. One of the areas where smartphones are used as a teaching tool is Foreign Language Teaching. Students benefit from different types of applications such as dictionaries, a variety of instructional games, training practices and translation applications. In addition to this, thanks to the content provided by the Internet and social networks, they perform activities such as listening to music, watching movies, reading electronic books. In our study, we also aim to see the potential of smartphones to be used in foreign language teaching within the scope of Mobile Assisted Language Instruction, to reveal the expectations of students in this subject and to search for ways of using these devices more effectively as a teaching tool. For this purpose, a semi-structured questionnaire consisting of closed and open ended questions was prepared and applied to the students who are studying in Marmara University, Foreign Languages Education (French, English and German Language Teaching) section during spring 2015-2016. Descriptive Statistical Technique was used in the analysis of the obtained data and Content Analysis was used in the analysis of open ended questions.

Keywords

Smartphones, Foreign language teaching, Lesson material, Technology, Education

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