Major Findings and Discussion

5.1.1. Preferring Using Mobile Phones for Vocabulary Learning

The results of the server logs showed that the students used their mobile phones far more often than PCs. This finding differed greatly from the previous ones in Stockwell’s studies, in which the university students’ preferred using PCs the most (Stockwell, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2013; Stockwell & Liu, 2015). Such difference might result from the fact that university students are more likely to own a personal computer than high school students. In the present study, some students had limited access to PCs as they often belonged either to their elder siblings or their working parents, according to the results of the interview. As they were still teenage adolescents studying at local high schools, a personal computer for academic purposes would not be as necessary to them as it would be to university students. Compared to PCs, mobile phones, especially smartphones, were the device that these students commonly owned. The smartphone ownership of the students was nearly 100% in the present study, compared to 74.3% for the Japanese students and 87.3% for the Taiwanese students in Stockwell and Liu’s 2015 study years ago. Since smartphone was the device that an overwhelming majority of the high school students owned nowadays in Taiwan, preferring mobile phones to other types of devices would be an

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expected result.

Generally, the high ownership of mobile phones and low availability of other types of devices contributed to the high school students’ strong preferences for mobile phones. They preferred mobile phones because they used it much more often than any other type of devices in their daily lives. According to the interviews with students, many of them did not reveal any interest in using other devices during the experiment, nor did they have all kinds of devices at home, especially laptop PCs and tablet PCs.

They considered using their mobile phones the fastest and most convenient way to complete a vocabulary exercise. Some even took it for granted that the exercises should be done on mobile phones as it has been the most widely-used tool in modern life, while some also considered turning on a computer to be time-wasting. The students in the present study were easily accustomed to mobile-assisted vocabulary learning.

5.1.2. Slight Performance Difference among Devices

In terms of the scores achieved and the time spent on the exercises completed via different tools, mobile phones did not hold any particular advantage in both aspects.

The students did nearly equally well whether they used their mobile phones or PCs.

However, as the number of entries for laptop PCs and tablet PCs were much smaller than that of entries for mobile phones and desktop PCs, the data collected from the server logs would not be sufficient enough to infer whether there were differences of the scores achieved and the time spent in these two devices compared to mobile phones or desktop PCs.

If we compare the performance only between mobile phones and desktop PCs, the differences are small. Results in Table 3 showed that the students using mobile phones achieved a score a little lower than that achieved by the students using desktop

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PCs. Such finding was similar to Stockwell and Liu’s 2015 study. The average figures in Table 4 showed that the students spent 0.26 minutes less on mobile phones than on desktop PCs, which was contrary to Stockwell’s findings (Stockwell, 2010, 2013;

Stockwell & Liu, 2015). It was inferred that students have gradually become used to mobile phones over time. The gap has been closed from 1.4 minutes in Stockwell’s 2010 study to 0.8 minutes in Stockwell and Liu’s 2015 study. In the present study, the gap between mobile phones and desktop PCs could also likely be closed, or even reversed, as the results suggested.

5.1.3. Private Places as the Most Preferred Location

As for locations and the preferred type of devices, the results of the interviews were consistent with the quantitative data. That is, the students most often completed the vocabulary exercises with their mobile phones in private places—when they were studying at home. The finding was similar to Stockwell’s 2013 study, in which both PC users and mobile phone users most often did the vocabulary activities at home.

The percentage of the present study, nevertheless, was higher than the previous one, meaning the students less often did the vocabulary exercises outside elsewhere, even when they were at school.

Interestingly, whichever device the students used, they did the vocabulary exercises mostly at home. Despite the advantages such as small size and easy portability that allowed the device to be taken with the users anywhere they could go, mobile phones in the present study were still much more frequently used in private places compared to public places or even transportations, as can be shown in Table 5.

In addition, no matter where a vocabulary exercise was done, mobile phones would invariably be the most preferred type of device for the students.

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5.1.4. No Discomfort with Mobile Phones

Problems such as small screen, high cost, input method, and small font size of mobile devices (Stockwell, 2007, 2008, 2013) did not negatively affect the students, with only few exceptions found in the interviews. Once the above-mentioned limitations were overcome both by mobile technology advancement and by users’

adaptation to mobile devices, the students in the present study would reveal a welcoming attitude toward using mobile phones for vocabulary learning. The high school students in the present study, born in the time when mobile technology is much more advanced, should be more familiar with and used to using mobile phones, which led to the extensive use of the device, including using it to get online and do vocabulary exercises.