EFL Students’ Perceptions of Discussion-based Activities by Using Mobile Phone Technology
Subject Areas : All areas of language and translationTahereh Khezrab 1 , Reza Raissi 2 , ندا Hedayat 3
1 - Department of English Language, Varamin-Pishva Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
2 - Department of English Language, Varamin-Pishva Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
3 - Department of English Language, Varamin-Pishva Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran
Keywords: reading strategies, Translation activities, EFL students’ perceptions, Mobile phone technologies, Online discussion-based activities,
Abstract :
During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, people helped each other to change conditions in theirsocial lives to be alive. During these periods, the educational system followed some ways to changethe pedagogical methods to present instructional assistance with the use of some mobile devices. Concerningthis necessity, the priority of launching online education was high on the agenda in Iran andthroughout the world. Regarding this condition, the most available device for every student to receivethis type of instruction was a mobile phone set. Thus, the present study was to find the Iranian EFLuniversity students' perceptions of the use of mobile phone technologies for online discussion-basedactivities. In this qualitative study, the researchers used convenience sampling, and out of 99 Lawstudents from two Iranian universities, 10 students were selected as participants. To obtain therequired data, semi-structured interviews were held with participants to find the objective of thisstudy. Qualitative results for semi-structured interviews demonstrated that Islamic Azad Universitystudents reflected their interest in conducting comparative or discussion-based translation activities todevelop reading comprehension skills of legal texts based on cooperative and collaborative readingstrategies in online discussion classes. The findings of the study can be useful for administrativeexecutives in the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology to revise their curriculum, universityteachers to use the results of the study in their syllabuses and EFL university students in differentfields of study, particularly Law students, to use the findings in their learning procedure based ononline discussion-based instruction and use of mobile phone technologies
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