Using Mobile Instant Messaging for English Learning: A case study with EFL university students in Taiwan
Li-Chen Wang 1, Pei-Yu Cheng 2* & Yueh-Min Huang3 1Tajen university Center for General Education, Taiwan
2, 3Department of Engineering Science, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan alison@tajen.edu.tw
* peiyu.cheng.tw@gmail.com huang@mail.ncku.edu.tw
Abstract
In Taiwan, English is one of the most important subjects to learn. How to effectively improve English proficiency has been an important education issue. Listening and speaking are important skills in English communication. At present, TOEFL, IELTS, and TOEIC, along with other English tests, have already added listening and speaking sections. This shows the importance of listening and speaking in English. However, in Taiwan, due to the lack of an appropriate English environment in which to practice, English learners feel tense and anxious while communicating with English speakers. Therefore, in order to help students practice listening and speaking, this study will combine a mobile instant messaging application with a college English listening and speaking learning assistant system. With the convenience of mobile devices and without geographical restrictions, learners can practice English at any time and any place. This system can let learners have a real dialogue and allows them to practice through the voice function. At the same time, the teachers can also join the conversation, observe students' learning processes, and give feedback. This will create a ubiquitous learning environment for enhancing English listening and speaking skills. Fifty freshmen students from one university participated in this study; they were randomly assigned into the experiment group and the control group. They were assigned different English activities. We then compared the use of the mobile instant messaging and traditional learning activities. Additionally, this study will aim at the learning motivation, learning satisfaction and English learning anxiety to proceed the discussion.
Keywords: English Listening, English speaking, English learning anxiety, Instant Messaging
1. Introduction
In the 21st century, English has become the lingua franca of our globalized age, and is also
currently the most important second language in non-English speaking countries(Long, 2006).
English is a foreign language in Taiwan, which lacks the foreign language environment for learning
English, and its students' listening and speaking abilities are often weaker than their writing and
communication and is also one of the major factors that affect communication ability(Cameron, 2002).
Hence, in recent years, the government has made quite a few changes to the design of the English
language curriculum, focusing on listening, speaking, reading, and writing rather than just reading
and writing as in the past(Su, 2006). Taiwan's university English teaching programs aim to nurture
students' overall listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills, and improving their English listening
and speaking ability is one of the major objectives(Lai, 2009). The goal is to train students to be able
to use English to communicate in day-to-day life. However, in reality, English listening and speaking
training for university students runs into lots of difficulties, such as the lack of real conversation
scenarios, of time for using English communicate, and of such conditions as space and having
qualified teachers(Belcher, 2006; Kung & Chuo, 2002). Thus, current university students generally
do not possess the ability to communicate in English effectively(Lai, 2009; Yang, 2007).
Some studies suggest that to improve students' English speaking and listening ability, the first
step is to create an English listening and speaking learning environment, and the next step is to make
a habit of speaking English(Gibbons, 2002; Plass, Chun, Mayer, & Leutner, 1998). However, in
traditional English teaching environments, teachers are constrained by traditional classrooms and
teaching methods; hence they are faced with quite a few difficulties when trying to incorporate
listening and speaking into the class(Matsuda, 2012). Furthermore, even if students practice listening
and speaking during class, the teacher cannot monitor all the students at the same time to see if they
are truly complete the practice(Lu, Hou, & Huang, 2010). On the other hand, while conducting
language learning activities, the need to encourage student participation and feedback is an important
western countries however, only a small percentage of learners from Asian countries are willing to
take the initiative to speak the foreign language(Hu & McKay, 2012). If the students are instructed to
ask and answer questions in English, usually only a portion of them are actually engaged in it. Some
studies have also pointed out that Asian students will easily become anxious or remain silent when
asked to use the target language to ask questions, speak or to perform other dialog activities(Awan,
Azher, Anwar, & Naz, 2010; Liu & Huang, 2011; Liu & Jackson, 2011). Studies suggest that students'
foreign language learning anxiety is a result of the difficulties in language learning(Anyadubalu, 2010;
Berman & Cheng, 2010; Xu & Li, 2010). Some researchers have indicated that the difficulties in
learning English is the main reason for anxiety caused by English learning, and that the high anxiety
scale score is the main factor affecting the learning results of university students(Lei & Hu, 2014;
Shang, 2013). The main features of the difficulties in English language learning are the difficulties
related to listening and speaking, grammar, memory, comprehension, etc., which produce negative
experience in the learning of English. Such difficulties are currently also the main reasons for the
difficulties for the English language students of Taiwan’s universities(Hong, Hwang, Tai, & Chen,
2014). Consequently, a new method and learning strategy are needed to improve university students'
English language learning in order to enhance their listening and speaking abilities.
With the development and popularization of mobile devices, a new method of learning was
developed that can give students a rich, real-time, convenient and cooperative learning experience,
allowing the integration of learning into daily life. Hence, the application of mobile devices in
teaching has attracted much attention. And their application and practice in classroom teaching has
assisting language learning, targeted at a mobile learning environment. Studies have revealed that
using mobile devices to assist language learning not only can increase students' interest in language
learning, their convenience also offers students a good learning experience. On the other hand, the
rapid development of instant messaging applications has made them the main tool for communication
on smart phones. And with the continuous evolution in the application and concepts of instant
messaging, more and more cooperative learning methods through instant messaging have been used
in actual learning environment. With the assistance of instant messaging, learners can use mobile
devices to practice foreign language conversations. Most studies have confirmed that this leads to
positive results. Furthermore, studies also show that this type of learning method not only increases
learners' motivation, but also improves their learning results. However, some studies suggest that
during mobile learning activities, suitable learning strategies and tools are still required to help
students to grasp the knowledge. Researchers Huang and Chiu indicated that in an omnipresent
mobile learning environment, only methods that possess the characteristics of being proactive,
realistic, constructive, and cooperative and personalized are meaningful learning methods. The
researchers also pointed out that these types of learning methods, if used inappropriately, will lower
the learning efficiency and may even reduce the learning effects.
A question worth asking is "How do we use instant messaging applications to assist university
students in learning English, and how do we increase the listening and speaking practice of university
students in English?" In fact, creating English listening and speaking learning environment using
instant messaging is the main requirement, and getting students to willingly use English in
classroom settings, practicing English dialog is a common learning task; and another main
consideration is that the teacher supervises and confirms whether or not students have truly completed
the practice(Zou, 1998). In light of the above, this study investigated the use of LINE in the teaching
of university English listening and speaking in universities with the hope of improving the current
predicament of university students in their English listening and speaking abilities. This study
attempted to design an English learning model that incorporates LINE, and conducted a two-week
experiment of actual teaching to test the effectiveness of this type of teaching method.
2. Research Methods
2.1. Experiment designTo evaluate whether or not the LINE-based English language learning method designed by this
study is conducive to fostering students' English speaking abilities, this study used a
quasi-experimental design to investigate the learning results. This study had 50 subjects from two classes
of first-year students from a university in southern Taiwan. The teacher randomly assigned the
students into the experimental group and a control group. During the experiment, all the subjects
participated in the entire experiment, and completed all the learning units and tasks. The
experimental group (25 people) used the English learning method designed by this study to conduct
learning activities; The control group (25 people) used traditional learning activities. In order to
ensure that both groups of students were of similar ability, an English proficiency pre-test was
conducted before the start of the experiment to ensure that the ability of both groups was similar.
After confirming the similarity in the level of their initial ability, this study moved on to arrange for
ended, an English proficiency post-test for both groups was held, which covered the vocabulary
learned during the experiment, example sentences, and a speaking test. After the test, the students
filled out a questionnaire, asking for the students' feedback on the extent of their learning
motivation, learning satisfaction and English learning anxiety in the learning activities.
The experiment process of this study was divided into the five stages: pre-test, system
operation explanation, experimental activities, post-test, and questionnaire. As shown in figure 1,
first, in order to verify that the two subject groups had a similar level of ability, a pre-test was given
to the research subjects before the experiment to see if there was a significant difference between
the two groups of students. Having confirmed that their initial ability was similar, the two groups
participated separately in six learning activities per week for two weeks. Each learning activity was
50 minutes in duration. After the experiment, students were asked to fill out the questionnaire and
the post-test within 40 minutes. The tests and questionnaires were collected after the allocated time.
The experiment process is shown below in Figure 1:
2.2. Research tools
2.2.1. Instant Messaging, LINE
The system utilizes mobile phones as the device to enable learners practice their speaking and
listening through the instant messaging app, LINE. As shown in figure 1, students can use LINE's
voice messaging function to carry out real-time conversation practice. When students press the voice
messaging function button, the voice message will automatically be sent to the chat room. As shown
in figure 2, students can click open this message, and the system will play this voice message. Through
this function, students can, by repeatedly recording and playing back. Afterwards, the student can
give a reply after listening to the message. That's can more conveniently to practice English speaking
and to correct their own English pronunciation and intonation. As shown in figure 3, after the group
finished their practice session, teachers could listen to the conversations via the system to evaluate
and give feedback to each student individually.
Figure 3 Teacher interface
2.3.2. Learning activities, pre-test and post-test, and questionnaire
A total of six learning activities were conducted in this study; every learning activity practiced
and drilled a different kind of conversational scenario. The learning activities were divided into two
stages. In the first stage, the teacher first taught the students the vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation,
sentence patterns and structures in the script of the English situational conversations. Once the
students understood the content of the conversation, they were divided into groups for the
second-stage practice. Each student in each group took turns to role play the different characters to practice
their pronunciation and conversation so as to improve the fluency of their conversation.
The scenarios used in this study were designed by highly experienced university English teachers
and experts with regard to the situations in daily life. There were six scenarios for the learning
activities, namely, shopping, travel, office, transportation, ordering food, and social interaction.
The scores of the pre and post-tests were calculated on a 100 mark system. The content of the
the post-test was 30 scenario-based vocabulary and related example sentences from the learning
activity and a speaking test. And the sources of the questionnaire were based on past questionnaires
developed by scholars and experts, and it was also reviewed and examined by expert researchers. The
questionnaire was divided into four parts: learning satisfaction, learning motivation, and English
learning anxiety.
3. Result and discussion
3.1. Pre and post-test results analysis
As shown in table 1, the respective scores of the two groups of students in the pre-test were:
experiment group: 56.73; control group 56.91. There were no significant differences between the
two groups in the pre-test results (t =-.032, p > .05), so the basic ability levels of the two group of
students was regarded as identical.
Table 1: T-test results for the pre-test scores.
Group N mean SD t
Pre-test Experimental 25 56.73 8.073 -.032
Control 25 56.91 8.092
After the two groups took part in the learning activities under different system, the marks they
scored were analyzed through an independent samples t-test. As shown in table 2, the average score
for students in the experiment group was 73.23, and 63.65 for the control group. The two groups of
students reached the statistical significance level (t =5.32*，p < .0.001) in their learning results. We
can conclude that after implementing the two different learning activities, the experimental group
had better learning results than the control group.
Table 2: T-test results for the post-test scores.
Post-test Experimental Control 25 73.23 5.132 5.32*** 25 63.65 5.214 *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001 3.2. Learning motivation
Independent samples t-test was used to analyze the views and cognition of the students of the
"learning motivation" variable to see if there any difference existed. As shown in table 3 below, the
T-value of the subjects from different “groups” in the “learning motivation” variable, was .423 (p
> .05), which did not reach the statistical significance level. This indicates that the two groups of
students had the same views and cognition in regard to the "learning motivation" variable.
Table 3: The t-test of the English learning anxiety between the two groups
Group N mean SD t .Learning motivation Experimental Control 25 4.27 0.31 .423 25 4.23 0.42 3.3. Learning satisfaction
As regards the views and cognition of the students of the two groups of the " learning
satisfaction variable, they are shown in table 4 below. The T value of the subjects from different
"groups" in the "satisfaction with the learning methods" variable was 2.413 (p<.05), which reached
the statistical significance level. This indicates that the experiment group was better than the control
group in respect of "satisfaction with the learning methods".
Table 4: The t-test of the Learning satisfaction between the two groups
Group N mean SD t Learning satisfaction Experimental Control 25 3.95 0.33 2.413* 25 3.61 0.67 *p<.05,
3.4. English learning anxiety(ELA)
higher than the experimental group students, t=-6.082, p<.001). This result suggests that using the
LINE-based English learning method can lower learner’s English learning anxiety.
Table 5: The t-test of the English learning anxiety between the two groups
Group N mean SD t ELA Experimental Control 25 73.23 5.132 5.32*** 25 63.65 5.214 *p<.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001
4. Conclusion and Future Work
Through a quasi-experiment design, this study investigated the effects of conducting learning
activities using the LINE-based English teaching model designed by this study on the differences
among learners in respect of their learning results, learning satisfaction, learning motivation, and.
English learning anxiety. This section will describe and explain the major findings of this study
using the results of data analysis. First, the study results will be summarized, followed by an
explanation of the limits of this study, and lastly, suggestions for future studies.
In the section of learning results, the research results show that the experimental group had
higher post-test scores than the control group. This indicates that using the LINE-based English
learning model designed by this study in conducting learning activities produced better learning
results. In the questionnaire given after the learning activities, we found from the conclusion and
analysis of the dimensions of the learners’ satisfaction with learning methods, learning motivation,
English learning anxiety. In of the dimensions of learning satisfaction and English learning anxiety,
there was significant difference between the experimental group and the control group.
This study mainly used common scenarios in daily life in designing teaching materials; at
hope to design teaching materials based on more scenarios. In respect of learning strategies, this
study only worked through groups, without yet introducing learning strategies. In the future, if
various learning strategies are to be introduced, the effects should be enhanced. In dividing students
into groups, what we do at present is only to randomly assign them to groups. In the future, if
groups are assigned according to students with different learning styles or with similar learning
style, we should discover even more results. This study was implemented in a Year 1 Basic English
course at a university. In the future, if it is to be implemented in the English courses of other year
levels, how the system and learning activities are to integrate is still an area awaiting planning and
exploration.
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