MOBILE ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING (MALL): LEARNING ATTITUDES OF GEOGRAPHY STUDENTS TOWARDS MOBILE ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNING

Abstract

The influence of mobile devices in the field of education is increasing day by day. The purpose of this research is to examine the attitudes towards Mobile Assisted Language (English) Learning and the effects of some variables on the attitudes of geography students. The study was conducted with 203 students studying at the Geography Department of a state university in the fall semester of the 2022-2023 academic year. Data in the study was collected through the Information Form, and English Mobile Learning Attitude Scale (EMLAS). SPSS 22.0 program was used in the analysis of the data. The participants' mean scores on the EMLAS sub-dimension and total score were 3.87 (SD=0.81) for “Behavior”, 3.86 (SD=0.80) for “Perceived Control”, 3.71 (SD=0.94) for “Affection’’, 3.66 (SD= 0.73) for “Perceived Usefulness” and 3.75 (SD=0.59) for “EMLAS total”. While there was no significant difference in terms of gender, grade, best English skill, and having a language score (p>0.05), a significant difference was found in terms of the level of English, the desire to do postgraduate education, the belief in the necessity of learning English, the positive attitude towards learning English with mobile devices, and finding the distance education English courses at the university useful (p<0.05). The findings show that geography department students had positive attitudes towards how mobile devices were used, how these devices controlled and impacted learning English. The findings suggest that including Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in the geography teaching plan would be beneficial.