The Impact of Mobile Learning on the Effectiveness of English Teaching and Learning—A Meta-Analysis
Meng-Lin Chen
Abstract
Mobile devices have been widely used in both teaching and learning English as a second or foreign language. The impact of using various mobile devices on the learning outcome has thus been subject to an increasing number of educational experiments. However, the results of these experiments have not always been consistent or conclusive. In order to evaluate the effectiveness of mobile learning, it is necessary to employ a meta-analysis approach to synthesize results taken from previous experiments. This study examined 29 experiments, including both true and quasi, on the learning outcome of those learners who used mobile devices in their English learning process. Following <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$PRISMA$ </tex-math></inline-formula> guidelines for conducting meta-analysis, this study has found that mobile learning has a highly positive effect on English learning outcomes with a weighted effect size of 0.893. The effect of mobile learning is subject to potential moderating variables, such as learners’ levels, intervention time, language learning areas being targeted, hardware and software, and implementation setting. Taken as a whole, the results indicate that mobile learning is affording a change in English learning that does not undermine pre-existing models of English language pedagogy. Therefore, progressive exploration and implementation of mobile learning effectiveness appears to be of some importance to English teaching and learning stakeholders.