The Effectiveness Of Learning English Vocabulary Under Mobile Condition:an Empirical Investigation

In recent years, with the development of communication technology and network information technology, Mobile Learning has become more and more popular in people’s life and study. Many educators have done researches on constructing Mobile Learning platform, designing Mobile Learning system and surveying the interest in using Mobile Learning to learn English. However, there are few empirical researches about Mobile Learning and English vocubalary acquisition. With the guidance of Mobile Learning theories, this study first analyzed the advantages and disadvantages of Mobile Learning, and then conducted a comparative study bewteen Mobile Learning and the traditional learning, i.e. learning from paper material, to investigate the effectiveness of English vocabulary learning under mobile condition. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used in analyzing the result.Two experiments, one investigating the effectiveness of short-term learning and the other the effectiveness of the long-term learning, and one interview were conducted in this study. The results are as follows. Firstly, in short-term learning, using paper material to learn English vocabulary is significantly more effective than using mobile phone software. However, no significant difference was found between the two learning methods in long-term learning experiment. Secondly, using paper material to learn synonym, antonyms and derivation of the word is significantly more effective than using mobile phone software. In both short-term learning and long-term learning, students achieved significantly higher score on the tests of vocabulary meaning than on the tests of other aspects of vocabulary knowledge, such as spelling. Thirdly, students’receptive knowledge of vocabulary far exceeds their productive knowledge, especially in meaning.