An investigation of the lived experience of university students and teachers with English language learning and teaching mediated by mobile technology

Abstract

Moving beyond the ‘digital native’, ‘digital immigrant’ and ‘digital age’ rhetoric, this study explores university students’ and English teachers’ lived experiences of English language learning and teaching as mediated by mobile technology in China. The findings confirm that mobile-assisted English language learning is a multi-model, personal and cultural endeavour, promoted by social interaction and facilitated by mobile technology. The empirical evidence fills the gap in the literature’s assessment of how teachers and students are at the centre of mobile technology use for English language learning or teaching while emphasising the unique cultural dimensions of Confucian thinking and emergent mobile culture from a sociocultural perspective. Consequently, an updated sociocultural framework with empirical support is proposed to investigate the theoretical and practical implications of students’ and teachers’ contextually mediated choices and behaviours regarding mobile technology use in the mobile age. This enables an integrative understanding of the nature of mobile technology-assisted English language learning (MAELL) and teaching (MAELT). The study follows a multi-method research design, adopting questionnaires (1,715 university students and 218 English teachers) and semi-structured interviews (35 students and seven teachers). The results show that both teachers and students, to a large extent, actively engage with mobile learning with various levels of readiness. The findings demonstrate that the traditional Confucian culture exerts relatively negative influences on teachers’ and students’ attitudes and adoptions. However, the findings also indicate that mobile technology itself acts as an essential cultural shaping factor, more salient than culture inherited from the societal or pedagogical realms. Pedagogically, the findings confirm the unique affordance of mobile technology for English language learning, including time-space continuum, personalisation, collaboration, authenticity, motivational strategies and pedagogy. Thus, the project suggests that mobile technology enables a different approach to learning English as a foreign language (EFL). In light of the above, the study examines the challenges and obstacles of stakeholders’ intensive and extensive adoption of MAELL and MAELT, encompassing macro-, meso- and micro-level perspectives. In doing so, it extends the current understanding of MAELL through a sociocultural lens that highlights the importance of the interplay between learner agency, other agents, cultural practices of MAELL and the wider context. In conclusion, the study’s rich empirical evidence suggests methods of maximising the learning potential of mobile technology to tailor a culturally adaptive approach to education innovation.