Date of Award
8-1-2013
Degree Name
Master of Arts
Department
Foreign Languages and Literatures
First Advisor
Thibeault, Thomas
Abstract
Mobile learning is the attainment of any knowledge or skill through using mobile technology, anywhere, anytime (Hashemi et al. 2477). Hashemi and Ghasemi also state that mobile phones are one of the most successful technologies in the past two decades (2947). More and more educators are using mobile phones as an educational tool. Second Language Acquisition has also been redefined due to the advent of Mobile learning and text-messaging. Khazaie and Ketabi explain that "the value of deploying technology at the service of learning and teaching seems to be both self-evident and unavoidable" (174). There are many studies of using text-message technologies in education and in Second Language Leaning of English, but these publications do not provide any evidence of the use of Mobile technologies or text-messaging in Second Language Acquisition of Spanish. This paper presents a study using text-message in the teaching and learning of Spanish Vocabulary in a second semester Spanish course. It compared a Control group that used a conventional paper based task learning method and an Experiment group that used text-messaging leaning method to learn twelve Spanish Vocabulary words. The results from the study show that text-messaging can be used as an effective Spanish Vocabulary language learning tool and students enjoyed the use of this vocabulary learning method. The finding in this study could perform as a roadmap in creating more studies that involve the use of mobile learning and text-messaging in the learning of Spanish vocabulary and Spanish as a Second Language.
Access
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