Mobile learning: Limitations and challenges along with its strengths

The advancements in the field of mobile technology have changed traditional educational
settings by making it ubiquitous. Mobiles as portable hand-held wireless devices are continuously
growing as a pedagogic tool to enhance the teaching and learning strategies and skills (LSRW). The
innovation in mobile technology has made mobile assisted language learning (MALL) a popular
assistive tool among language institutions, instructors and learners (Burston, 2015; Duman et al.,
2015; Shadiev, Hwang & Huang, 2017). Mobile phones have made learner-teacher communications
flexible by including course updates & reminders or referrals to related websites and up-to-date
instructional resources. The aim of this paper is to discuss the m-learning strengths along with the
major limitations and challenges it brings in L2 learning.
Various studies have proved that the introduction of m-learning applications (for example
-Duolingo) in language education has been successful in extending learning beyond classroom, and
learners are able to make autonomous decisions about where, when, and how to study L2 (Reinders &
Benson, 2017). Learners have perceived the flexible, gamified aspects (Werbach, 2014) of m-learning
and easy availability of in-built materials in effective and efficient learning. Mobile learning apps
provide an added advantage and customized educational contents which act as a catalyst in the
enhancement of their personal learning experiences. Personalized learning is the formation of learning
habits by taking into consideration various characteristics of a learner such as learning styles and
strategies, learners’ beliefs and needs, motivation and interests, and also their responsive/conscious
choice of what to learn and how to learn. M-learning has been able to mediate, assist, transform and
scaffold learners’ language learning process to a great extent.
Despite the above mentioned advantages, I agree with the limitations and challenges which
m-learning has faced due to its tendency to rely on a behaviorist and teacher- centered approach
towards language instruction (Reinders & Pegrum, 2015). Krashen (2014) has always been in support
of implicit and subconscious language acquisition and described how ‘Duolingo’ relies primarily on
techniques that promote conscious learning and explicit L2 knowledge. In addition, these mobile apps
follow same pattern of structuralistic learning activities (based on GTM and ALM), precise
curriculum and lack of authentic language. Moreover, a study by Leowan et al (2019) has shown
results that mobile apps have been successfully able to teach at macro levels only and learners find it
hard to imbibe their learning at micro levels. Participants in above study have doubt on their own
learning progress, as they were not able to align their gained knowledge with the perceptions of actual
acquisition.
Together with above mentioned lacunas, after doing meta-analysis of learning outcomes,
Burston (2015) has been able to reach a conclusion by saying that MALL publications are few and far
between in producing statistically reliable measures of learning outcomes. He mentioned that, the
main accountability of this paucity is the absence of specific implementation projects (that involves
actual field testing), short durations, involvement of small size of sample and more focus on research
testing and device experimentation than actual curriculum integration. Various MALL studies have
been failed to produce a quantitative statistical significant difference (Brown et al., 2012) for the
generalizability of results. Factors such as design shortcomings, inability to track actual usage (Song
2008), difference in pedagogical approach for EG and CG (Oberg and Daniels, 2013) and presence of
confounding variables such as unspecific learning conditions of control group have played a
significant role in the drawbacks of MALL studies.
MALL has a long way to go and efforts should be done to realize and utilize its pedagogical
potentials efficiently in language education by effectively exploiting mobile devices in conformity
with learner-centered, constructivist, collaborative methodologies (Tai, 2012). Knowledge and
gaining L2 skills are the key motives to be taken into consideration before actual maneuvering of m-
learning in classrooms. In classrooms, teachers can enhance L2 acquisition further by giving freedom
to students to select their activities, pace of learning (Sharples, 2006) and using plethora of e-
resources and e-tools. For example: e-news websites and apps, online e-books, learning course
websites and apps could be used in classrooms for improving listening or speaking skills (e.g. TED).
In addition, by incorporating projects on context awareness and situated learning (Chen et al., 2009;
Liu, 2009; Wu et al., 2011) along with magnified inclusion of out-of-class inter student
communication (Liu, 2009) better results could be achieved.