L2 VOCABULARY INSTRUCTION

Abstract

The advancements in mobile technology have made smartphones more accessible and more powerful, and this has led to the growth of the field of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL). Because of this and considering that most smartphone applications for English learning have activities designed to instruct vocabulary (Kim & Kwon, 2012), this study aimed at analyzing the instruction of vocabulary in the three most used applications for language learning until the end of 2018. More specifically, it investigated: a) what aspects of word-knowledge the applications develop; b) whether they provide a number of encounters with the target vocabulary and whether they are massed or spaced; and c) the nonverbal representations employed by the applications. The results showed that the applications: a) instruct the spoken and written form of words, but often neglect other aspects of word knowledge; b) provide multiple, massed encounters with the target vocabulary; and c) employ images and videos as nonverbal representations that are not always relevant to the instruction of target vocabulary. From the analysis, we concluded that the applications can be used as a tool to assist the instruction of vocabulary in spite of limitations such as the lack of chances for language production and decontextualized instruction.

Keywords

• vocabulary instruction
• mobile learning
• second language learning
• smartphone applications