Teachers’ Mobile Assisted Oral Feedback: Characteristics and EFL Learners’ Attitudes

Mobile phones, as the most accessible and inexpensive devices, are acknowledged to be a strikingfactor changing the e-learning domain (Miangah & Nezarat, 2012). Thus, the objective of thisstudy was to explore the characteristics of the mobile assisted oral feedback and the attitudes andperceptions of the Iranian EFL learners toward mobile assisted language leaning (MALL) usingthe WhatsApp application. The study adopted a mixed method approach; it combined thequantitative analysis of the questionnaires with the qualitative analysis of the interviews. Thirtytwopre-intermediate students voluntarily participated in the study. After administrating aplacement test to check the homogeneity of the sample, the participants were assigned five oralproduction tasks throughout ten weeks. They were required to send their recordings via WhatsAppto receive feedback through the same tool. On the final session, a questionnaire was given to them,and 10 participants were randomly selected to be interviewed. It was found that teachers useexplicit correction and affirmation more frequently targeting grammar and holistic oralperformance as CF and PF respectively. The results also revealed positive attitudes toward mobileassistedfeedback and confirmed its facilitative role in boosting their speaking ability. Thus, it canconcluded that social communication applications can compensate for some of the limitations ofclassroom teaching.

کلیدواژه ها:

mobile assisted language learning ، feedback ، social communication applications