Attitude and Cognitive Specificity of Second Language Learning: A Study of Mobile-Assisted Islamic Culture-based Vocabulary Learning

Subject Areas : Journal of Language, Culture, and Translation

علیرضا جلیلی‌فر ¹ , زهره گونی‌بند شوشتری ² , سعید خزایی ³

1 - دانشیار گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، دانشگاه شهید چمران اهواز
2 - استادیار گروه زبان و ادبیات انگلیسی، دانشگاه شهید چمران اهواز
3 - دانشجوی دکتری آموزش زبان انگلیسی، دانشگاه شهید چمران اهواز

Received: 2014-06-09 Accepted : 2014-06-09 Published : 2012-12-01

Keywords: culture-based materials, cued- or non-cued-content, formulaic sequence, mobile-learning,

Abstract :

This study attempted to address the issue of how to incorporate formulaic sequences into English forms of Islamic instructions through the medium of high-tech media. To this end, formulaic representation of Islamic culture-based materials, consisting of 90 vocabulary items similar to the words and phrases used in Islamic cultural settings. They were integrated with multimodal cell-phone delivery of cued and non-cued content accessed by 218 Iranian male and female high-school juniors at a pre-intermediary level of English language proficiency. The participants were placed into four different working memory (WM) ability groups, using visual and verbal WM tests, via the short message service (SMS) and multimedia messaging service (MMS) in 18 virtual didactic sessions. Upon treatment, after the end of each virtual session, they were formatively evaluated on their recognition and recall of L2 vocabulary through the mobile-assisted testing module (MATM). The results indicated that except for learners of low-visual and low-verbal abilities the other three groups treated with content containing pictorial or formulaic representations performed significantly better on the tests. The study concluded that written and pictorial cues could provide useful complementary information.