UNIVERSITY EFL STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SMARTPHONE-ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING

Digital technologies exert a powerful impact on all human activity, including education. It appears that mobile learning occupies an influential role in the realms of contemporary language education due to its ubiquity, availability, and increasing popularity. The smartphone, being at the center of attention due to its increasing popularity and availability, represents a new, exciting, and innovative tool for L2 learning. This study aims to contribute to this area by examining the exploitation of smartphones for the purposes of English language learning and practice. A total of 108 research participants (n = 108) from the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic were involved in the study. Their task was to indicate their level of agreement by completing a Likert-scale questionnaire, which consisted of statements about exploiting smartphones for practicing and improving English. The research results demonstrate that overall, the students displayed high and very high levels of agreement with the majority of statements, but were neutral towards several questionnaire items. Moreover, 33 independent sample t-tests revealed that on the whole, no statistically significant differences between the Czech and Slovak students were identified. It can be concluded that students use smartphones to develop various language systems and skills, though to varying degrees, while it is the skill of speaking that is the least practiced and developed skill. Other findings involve the underuse of language learning apps, or participants expressing neutrality about preferring smartphones to laptops or computers. Finally, it is emphasized that further research in this area is urgently needed since this field still appears to be somewhat underexplored as smartphones, their features, and apps are continuously evolving.