Exploring the potential of commercial language apps to meet students’ learning needs when studying English at High School and University

Abstract

Nowadays, it is not difficult to see people with smartphones. They are part of our daily life and we use them all day for almost everything. Thanks to this, Mobile-Assisted Language Learning (MALL) is gaining popularity. The purpose of this study is to analyze the 15 most downloaded commercial apps from Google Play in order to identify first, whether these apps meet students’ learning needs and second, whether they explore the full potential of smartphones to support students’ in their learning process. Considering this, in this work a literary review has been done in order to identify the different types of learning that are supported by MALL. Besides, an analysis of the most downloaded apps for learning languages has been carried out to gather information on what is offered on Google Play. Apart from this, a questionnaire for students from High School and University has been designed in order to know students’ needs when learning English as a foreign language. The results obtained from the analysis of the questionnaires are highly revealing regarding students’ learning needs when using apps.