MP3s and IPods in Language Teaching

Nagat Zeinelabdin

MP3s and IPods in Language Teaching

As computers became a primary component of education in the developed world as well as in many developing nations, new technological hardware devises are coming into use. Research has proven the usefulness of other technological devises such as iPods and MP3 players for social and communicative fields and for language learning students. Such technologies are effective with today's students, who quickly pick up and cope with the use of new technologies. 

The Usefulness of iPods and MP3s:
The restless and busy style of contemporary college students poses difficulties in maintaining, and completing, college education (Krause, Hartley, James & McInnis, 2005).  College teachers are looking for ways to encourage their students to attend, listen, and memorize lectures. Although tape recorders have been in use for decades and are useful for recording and re-listening to lectures, the tapes are not comfortable in storage, arrangement and use. They are also time consuming (with forwarding and rewinding) and frequently lack good sound quality. On the other side, new electronic recording devises, MP3s and iPods are mobile, easy to use for almost everyone with a computer experience, and have the capacity to record semester-long lectures and diverse data. Also, iPods and Mp3s allow the user better organize and control over the recoded material, which can be stored and organized into files. 

Case study on the use of iPods:
A research by Shannon (2006) has assessed the students’ perspectives on the usefulness of iPods and MP3s in classroom learning. The study targeted evaluating the students’ reasons for not attending lectures. The research was conducted on Humanities course in the first semester of an academic year. IPod nanas were provided for borrowing for 24 students, out of a total of 105. Many students in the sample already possessed an MP3 player (25) or an iPod (19). 63 (out of 105) students did not attend all lectures (p. 753). Almost all students expressed that they missed lectures because of unavoidable work or travel priorities. All students believe that attending lectures is important in some way to make good achievements in the course.

A questionnaire for the students, in which 71 (out of 105) students participated, concluded that the students were generally well familiar with the use of PC and internet messaging (Shannon, 2006, p. 754). The lectures for the course were made available on line via audio file download. The Questionnaire revealed that the students thought audio streams to be useful for study. Only one out of the 71 student respondents thought that the audio recordings encouraged students not to attend the lectures (Shannon, 2006, p. 756). Students overall performance in the course was good; more than half of them receiving above passing grades. The research was also valuable for pointing out the importance of iPods and MP3s for international students who speak English as a foreign language. Lacking language skills, international students may need to re-listen to lectures as they may not understand everything the first time (Shannon, p. 755-756).

Concluding remarks:
Especially in student-centered education settings, such as language learning, iPods are found to be of much value (French, 2006).  Recently, iPods have been extensively used in language teaching programs of the Defense Language Institute to improve the students listening skills.

On many cases, language teachers improve students listening skills by providing audio recordings with no video. On other cases, the teachers prefer both, sound and picture recordings. In such cases, there are no better alternative tools than the iPods. Although audio-video files are available online, iPods have the advantage of being small, mobile, easy to use, and do not require internet connection.

 References:
Fench, D. P. (2006, September).  The name assigned to the document by the author. This field may also contain sub-titles, series names, and report numbers.iPods: Informative or Invasive?. Journal of College Science Teaching, 36(1), 58-59. Retrieved from URL or DOI provided by the publisher. Links to information on the publisher’s Web site which may include full text. http://www.nsta.org/main/news/stories/journal_archive_date_list.php?category_ID=89&issue_ID=984

 Shannon, S. J. (2006). Who's learning? Whose technology?. In Proceeedings [of] the 23rd annual conference of the Australasian Society for Computers in Learning in Tertiary Education, the University of Sydney, Sydney ( pp.753-756).

Krause, K.-L., Hartley, R., James, R., McInnis, C. (2005). The First Year Experience in Australian Universities: Findings from a Decade of National Studies. Centre for Studies in Higher Education, University of Melbourne. Retrieved from http://www.cshe.unimelb.edu.au/downloads/FYEReport05KLK.pdf