University students' academic vocabulary development through mobile-assisted learning: Exploring the impacts on receptive and productive knowledge.

This study explored the effectiveness of mobile-assisted vocabulary learning through digital flashcards on receptive and productive aspects of academic vocabulary knowledge among Iranian EFL university students. In a quasi-experimental design, 86 participants were divided into three groups: a digital flashcard group (DFs), a traditional paper flashcard (PFs) group, and a control group using word lists, to assess the impact of these methods on vocabulary acquisition over five weeks. The findings revealed that students utilizing DFs exhibited significant improvements in both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge compared to those using PFs and the control method. Notably, the increase in receptive vocabulary was more substantial than in productive vocabulary, highlighting the differential effects of DFs on various aspects of vocabulary learning. This finding underscores the need for targeted strategies to enhance productive aspects of academic vocabulary specifically. The study supports the integration of DFs into English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programs to leverage their potential in boosting vocabulary acquisition effectively. However, the lesser gains in productive vocabulary suggest the necessity for complementary instructional methods, which focus on more active vocabulary learning tasks. Based on these findings, the study argues that mobile-assisted vocabulary learning should be considered a practical strategy for supporting academic vocabulary development among university students.

Investigating the relationship between language teachers' occupational self-efficacy, satisfaction and meaning at work, and their subjective wellbeing.

Despite the growing interest in the well-being of educators, there is a significant gap in the literature regarding the specific factors that influence the well-being of language teachers. To address this gap, this study explored the relationship between Iranian language teachers' occupational self-efficacy, satisfaction and meaning at work and their subjective well-being. The study involved 120 EFL teachers, and data were collected through self-report questionnaires. The results pointed to significant positive correlations between subjective well-being and occupational self-efficacy (r = 0.625, p < 0.001) as well as satisfaction and meaning at work (r = 0.493, p < 0.001). Regression analyses further indicated that occupational self-efficacy, satisfaction and meaning at work were significant predictors of subjective well-being. Notably, occupational self-efficacy emerged as a stronger predictor, outweighing the influence of satisfaction and meaning at work. Furthermore, the ANOVA results demonstrated that the regression models significantly contributed to the prediction of subjective well-being, indicating the relevance of these factors in understanding language teachers' well-being. The coefficients analysis supported the significance of occupational self-efficacy (ß = 0.625, p < 0.001) in predicting subjective well-being, while satisfaction and meaning at work also made a significant contribution (ß = 0.258, p = 0.003). These findings suggest that enhancing teachers' occupational self-efficacy, satisfaction and meaning at work could promote their subjective well-being. The study contributes to understanding the relationship between teachers' job-related factors and their subjective well-being and could have implications for developing interventions to enhance their well-being.

Mobile-assisted academic vocabulary learning with digital flashcards: Exploring the impacts on university students' self-regulatory capacity.

With the global rise in international journals over the past decades, successful communication in science largely hinges upon developing competency in using English as the academic lingua franca. Accordingly, one aspect of developing academic literacy entails helping university students learn a group of medium-frequency and cross-disciplinary words (i.e., core academic vocabulary) employed extensively to describe abstract processes and organize rhetorical aspects of academic discourse. The current study aimed to investigate the contribution of mobile-assisted vocabulary learning with digital flashcards in scaffolding academic vocabulary learning and self-regulatory capacity development among university students. The participants were 54 Iranian university students selected based on their availability in the study context. The participants were assigned to an experimental group (N = 33) and a control learning condition (N = 21). Those in the experimental group used digital flashcards (i.e., Quizlet) to learn academic words in a recently developed core academic wordlist (i.e., NAWL), and the control group used traditional materials (wordlists) to learn the same vocabulary items. The participants' vocabulary knowledge and self-regulatory capacity for vocabulary learning were tested before and after the treatments. The findings indicated that although both groups improved their vocabulary knowledge and self-regulatory capacity after 4 months, the experimental group outperformed the control group in both measures, and the effect sizes of the observed differences were very large. Consequently, the study provided empirical evidence for the effectiveness of mobile-assisted vocabulary learning over traditional materials in developing academic literacy. The findings also indicated that using digital flashcards for vocabulary learning improves university students' capacity for undertaking self-regulated vocabulary learning. The implications of these findings for EAP programs are highlighted.

Mobile-assisted focus on forms in English for academic purposes instruction: Investigating the impacts on learning academic words.

Focus on forms (FonFs) is a pedagogical approach in Instructed Second Language Acquisition (ISLA) that emphasizes students' conscious and direct attention to learning target language features in isolation and outside their meaningful context. FonFs has been employed extensively in foreign language vocabulary instruction, and earlier studies reported positive results for such interventions. The present study investigated mobile-assisted FonFs in the context of English for Academic Purposes (EAP) to address the vocabulary learning needs of Iranian EFL students and examined developments in receptive and productive knowledge of academic words. In doing so, the participants in the experimental learning condition (N = 22) were exposed to academic vocabulary using digital flashcards on their mobile phones, and those in the control group (N = 15) used word lists. The participants' vocabulary knowledge was tested using different measures before and after the treatments, and the results were compared using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The findings indicated that mobile-assisted FonFs was effective in receptive and productive vocabulary learning, and the experimental group outperformed the control group in the post-tests. The effect size of the observed differences was also large; however, differences in productive aspects of academic vocabulary knowledge were associated with smaller learning effects for mobile-assisted FonFs. The study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on mobile-assisted language learning and highlights some implications for teaching academic vocabulary via mobile-assisted FonFs.

Learning English with electronic textbooks on mobile devices: Impacts on university students' vocabulary development.

The current study examined the use of electronic textbooks designed as mobile applications for learning vocabulary in English among Iranian university students. To this end, 95 university students in an experimental (N = 50) and a control group (N = 45) participated in the study. An explanatory sequential mixed methods design was employed and over an academic semester, the participants used either traditional materials or mobile-based electronic textbooks for learning 600 words in English. To assess the outcomes from different learning conditions, receptive knowledge of the target vocabulary items was tested in three junctures of time (i.e. pre-, post-, and delayed post-test). Additionally, open-ended questionnaires and interviews were used to collect qualitative data from the experimental group to further investigate their perceptions of using mobile-based electronic textbooks for vocabulary learning. The findings revealed a significant main effect for time and both groups significantly improved their vocabulary knowledge from pre-test to post-test. Moreover, a significant main effect was found for using electronic textbooks on mobile devices, and the experimental group outperformed the control group on the post- and delayed post-tests. The qualitative findings revealed three perceived benefits, namely episodic learning, easy access to materials, and enhanced enjoyment for mobile assisted vocabulary learning through electronic textbooks. The perceived challenges were related to health concerns, distractions associated with mobile environments, and external pressure resulting from excessive mobile use among the participants. In general, the findings of the study shed light on the potential offered by mobile-based textbooks for learning English vocabulary, with implications for teachers and materials developers in language teaching programs.

How much vocabulary is needed for comprehension of video lectures in MOOCs: A corpus-based study.

Over the past years, Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have emerged as new competitive advantages in the digital economy of higher education globally. Accordingly, an increasing number of individuals are attracted to these new learning environments for developing their knowledge and skills in a variety of subject areas. Despite these developments, research on linguistic features of MOOCs lectures as the main mediums for delivering the course contents remained limited. To address this gap, the present study analyzed a corpus of MOOCs lectures with around 4.45 million words to determine the size of vocabulary knowledge needed for 95 and 98% coverages. The findings revealed that sufficient coverage of the course contents requires knowledge of the 5,000 most frequent words in English. Nonetheless, achieving adequate coverage level requires a much larger vocabulary size of around 9,000 most frequent words in English. The study also found that widely used word lists for general and academic vocabulary (i.e., the GSL/AWL) fail to support MOOCs learners with sufficient vocabulary knowledge for adequate lexical coverage. Based on these findings, the study draws a number of implications for preparing non-native English speakers to use MOOCs effectively and setting research-informed vocabulary learning goals in instructional programs and materials.

Using Mobile Devices for Vocabulary Learning Outside the Classroom: Improving the English as Foreign Language Learners' Knowledge of High-Frequency Words.

The present study investigated the impacts of mobile assisted vocabulary learning via digital flashcards (DFs). The data were collected from 44 adult English as Foreign Language (EFL) learners in three intact classes in a private language teaching institute in Iran, randomly assigned to experimental (N = 27) and control (N = 17) learning conditions. The experimental group used a freely available DF application (i.e., NGSL builder) to learn items from a recently developed corpus-based word list for high-frequency vocabulary in English (NGSL). The treatment was implemented as out-of-the-classroom learning activities where the EFL learners used DFs to augment their vocabulary knowledge, and their learning gains were compared to the control group that received regular English language education. The participants' vocabulary knowledge was tested in pre-, post-, and delayed post-tests, and the findings indicated that using DFs for outside the classroom vocabulary learning contributed significantly to short- and long-term improvements in the knowledge of high-frequency words. The study provided empirical evidence for the affordances of mobile assisted vocabulary learning for learning a considerable proportion of core vocabulary and has some implications for addressing the vocabulary learning needs of EFL learners.

Teaching Academic Words With Digital Flashcards: Investigating the Effectiveness of Mobile-Assisted Vocabulary Learning for University Students.

The current study explored the effects of using digital flashcards (DFs) and mobile devices on learning academic vocabulary. The participants were 86 university students majoring in Psychology in two experimental conditions and one control group. A list of 361 core academic words frequently used in Psychology was taught to the participants using different materials, and the learning outcomes were compared across the three groups. Accordingly, the participants in the experimental group 1 (N = 31) used a DF application (i.e., NAWL builder), participants in the experimental group 2 (N = 30) used traditional materials (i.e., paper flashcards), and those in the control group were given a list of target words with their definitions. Receptive knowledge of the target words was tested before and after the treatment, and the learning outcomes were compared across the groups using one-way between-groups ANOVA. The findings of the study indicated that using DFs enhanced students' engagement with learning their discipline-specific academic vocabulary and that experimental group 1 outperformed those participants in other learning conditions. The findings add to the existing literature on mobile-assisted vocabulary learning and provide empirical support for the effectiveness of such platforms for learning academic vocabulary. The implications of the study were discussed in terms of the affordances provided by DFs on mobile devices and corpus-based word lists for informing vocabulary learning components in teaching English for Academic Purposes (EAP).