Abstract:
High penetrability of wireless, mobile, portable, and handheld devices has resultedin education for all as the mobile’s challenge coincides with an unprecedentedgrowth in access to pedagogical materials technology, particularly in developingcountries (UNESCO Mobile Learning Week Report, 2011). The present study setout to discover how Muslim learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) areencouraged to think about and learn the Islamic instructions—as an integral part oftheir native culture—in TL by incorporating communicative skills through thepedagogically mediated application of cell-phone. The user groups of interest were218 Iranian second-year male and female students of translation studies at PayameNoor University, from age range of 21-24, homogenized as upper-intermediatethrough conducting Nelson English language proficiency test, level 400 A. Theywere spread randomly across 109 dyads to learn technology-enhanced materials in36 nonformal sessions. To equip the Muslim learners with lifelong linguistic andsocial knowledge for constructing conversational bridges for full participation incivic life at international level, abbreviated letter writing notes were already adaptedto the cell-phone screen to be accessed by the learners via the SMS application. Thefinal application was given to the participants for actual use and evaluation for aperiod of 1 academic semester. After the students had finished learning didacticmessages, interactive SMS quizzes were sent to evaluate their performance. Theanalysis suggested that significant gains occurred as a result of mobile-basedrepresentation of shortened Islamic contents in English which was congruent withthe learners’ favorable attitude towards embracing brevity for lifelong learning ofTL contents via SMS.
Machine summary:
Through exploiting formality and nonformality features of text messaging for preparing the Iranian students for the range of academic demands they would have to face with, this study was aimed to explore the relationship between the Muslim students' learning of English letter writing skill for communicating Islamic instructions and content types, using cell-phone with a rich learning environment where the crucial features of technology such as video, abbreviated and nonabbreviated text, and music can be utilized for involving formal and nonformal modes of content-based development and designing issues in text based study materials.
1 Participants Parallel with successful modernization of the world's countries some researchers have acknowledged the challenges of intercultural communication in an increasingly globalised world (Hopkins, 2002; Nault, 2006; Sifakis & Sougari, 2003), this study was conducted among 218 out of 223 sophomore Iranian male (n = 84) and female (n = 134) students of translation studies, aging 21-24 spread randomly across 109 dyads at Payame Noor University to learn the Islamic instructions in TL by integrating English letter writing skill and through the cell- phone enhanced materials in 18 nonformal virtual sessions.
Samples of Abbreviated and Nonabbreviated Letter Writing Note on Making Appointment As the focus of the study to identify how and why learners did or did not employ shortened texting for letter English correspondence learning when they had alternative forms of completing the activities, a 2×2 Latin Square (LS) design was undertaken for conducting the major phase of this study which counterbalanced the effect of the order of representations.