Mobile apps for language learning

It wasn’t that long ago that the most exciting thing you could so with your new mobile phone was to download a ringtone. Today, new iPhone or Android phone users face the quandary of which of the hundreds of thousands of apps (applications) they should choose. It seems that everyone from federal government agencies to your local bakery has an app available. This phenomenon, not surprisingly has led to tremendous interest among educators. Mobile learning (often “m-learning”) is in itself not new, but new devices with enhanced capabilities have dramatically increased the interest level, including among language educators. The Apple iPad and other new tablet computers are adding to the mobile app frenzy. In this column we will explore the state of language learning apps, the devices they run on, and how they are developed. THE CHANGING MOBILE ENVIRONMENT As long as there have been portable audio-video and computing devices, there has been interest in exploring their use in language learning. As portable cassette players yielded to iPods and other MP3 players, the new capabilities of the hardware led to enhanced use of audio-based learning such as language podcasts with integrated transcripts. As PDA’s (personal digital assistants) became more widespread with the advent of the Palm Pilot and its successors, language dictionaries, e-book grammars, and flashcard programs began to appear. Palm also was the producer of some of the first smartphones, which integrated PDA functions with new capabilities including SMS messaging, built-in cameras, and voice recording. With a small internal grant, I was able in 2002 to purchase smartphones for each of the participants in a study abroad program in Austria. The picture taking, text messaging, and dual-language dictionaries proved to be very useful, but the main point of having the phones—for the students to write travel diaries—proved to be problematic as the text input system (T9 keyboard) was too slow and errorprone for writing longer texts efficiently. This kind of issue was not unusual at the time. Five years ago in LLT, George Chinnery (2006) surveyed the state of mobile language learning. He reported on projects using mobile phones for vocabulary practice, quiz delivery, live tutoring, and email lesson content delivery, and on other projects using PDA’s for file sharing, video playback and stylus text entry. In many of these instances, Chinnery reported that technical problems arose due to the limitations inherent in the devices, in particular small, low-resolution screens (problematic for image/video display or even good text reading), poor audio quality (both in phoning and audio playback), awkward text entry, limited storage/memory and slow Internet connectivity. Many of the language learning projects were seriously hampered by these issues. Moreover, the predominant operating systems (OS) for phones and PDA’s at the time, namely Palm OS, Windows Mobile, and Nokia Symbian, offered limited features and expandability. All did allow, however, apps to be loaded onto devices, but they were few in number and limited in functionality. Web browsing was constrained and slow; Web navigation using a mini-joystick or a stylus was awkward and error-prone. A huge step up in functionality arrived with the Apple iPhone in 2007. It is not only the iPhone’s own advanced features which have proven to be a game-changer in the mobile area, but also the fact that its success has led competitors to create other equally capable devices. With the iPhone, Android devices, and Windows Phone 7 products, what used to be phones with added-on computing capabilities have morphed into mini-computers which can also make phone calls. These devices go a long ways towards solving the issues arising from early efforts in mobile assisted language learning. Screens are considerably larger, with higher resolution and clarity, and capable—through more powerful processors—