Using What Students Have at Their Fingertips: Utilising Mobile Phones for Circular Writing

Authors

Mustafa Naci Kayaoğlu, Karadeniz Technical UniversityFollow
Şakire Erbay Çetinkaya, Karadeniz Technical UniversityFollow

Abstract

The integration of mobile phones into language teaching is at its infancy due to lack of uniform empirical support and limited studies focusing solely on vocabulary and pronunciation teaching. Arguing that writing should be merited further attention, we targeted a group of 26 English majoring students at a large-size public university in the northeast of Turkey to investigate their attitudes towards mobile phone-integrated language practice in the form of collaborative circular writing outside the school borders and collaborative whole class conferencing in the classroom with a seven-week case study. We gathered the qualitative data via an open-ended questionnaire, and a focus group interview showed that the participants enjoyed the activity as it enabled them to learn new words and structures, enhanced their writing by bringing them a sense of audience and showing them the importance of cohesion and coherence, and helped them know each other better despite the inherent technical problems such as limited storage capacity, credit problems, and group work requirements. It can be concluded that mobile phone can enrich traditional board, pen and pencil language instruction with its interactive nature and the chance to reach information anytime and anywhere if the teacher plans the process carefully and sheds light on the nature and objectives of this integration beforehand.

Keywords

Mobile Phones, MALL, M-Learning, Circular Writing, ELT, Case Study

Author Bio(s)

Mustafa Naci Kayaoğlu holds a PhD from the University of Bristol. He is the author of Language Learning Strategies: Theory, Practice and Issues (2011) and co-author of Music, Language and Second Language Acquisition. He is the coordinator of the Applied Linguistics Graduate Programme (MA-PhD) at Karadeniz Technical University. He has been teaching BA, MA and PhD courses at the same university. He has published numerous articles and contributed to various projects. Correspondence regarding this article can be addressed directly to: nacikayaoglu@yahoo.com.

Lecturer Dr. Şakire Erbay Çetinkaya holds a PhD from the Applied Linguistic Department at Karadeniz Technical University, Trabzon, Turkey. She has been teaching at the same institution for 7 years. She is interested in English as an International Paradigm (EIL), teaching material evaluation and development, and reflective practice. She has published several articles on EIL, reflective practice, coursebook evaluation, to list but a few. Correspondence regarding this article can also be addressed directly to: sakireerbay@ktu.edu.tr

Publication Date

12-21-2018

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2018.3495

Recommended APA Citation

Kayaoğlu, M. N., & Erbay Çetinkaya, Ş. (2018). Using What Students Have at Their Fingertips: Utilising Mobile Phones for Circular Writing. The Qualitative Report, 23(12), 3098-3115. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2018.3495