Abstract

Possessing distinctive features of mobility, portability, and connectivity, mobile technology has inevitably become an integrated part of everyday instructional practices and activities. Foreign language learning, especially English language, could gain substantial benefits from these advances in technology to enhance learning experiences and respond to learners’ various needs and interests. There is a far-reaching investment in mobile learning projects at many Saudi Arabian universities including King Abdul Aziz University and Imam Mohammad Ibn Saud Islamic University. Moreover, the Ministry of Higher Education has a long-term plan known as “The Afaq Project” which is examining the current and future challenges for implementing online learning in all universities. Hence, the current study aims to examine students’ attitudes towards and their usage of smart phones when learning English as a foreign language. A questionnaire was designed and distributed among first year university students at the Northern Border University in Saudi Arabia. It included 25 items, each with varies in responses. A systematic sampling approach was adopted to choose the participants for this study.The duration of administering the questionnaire was from November 2017 to December 2017 and it was applied to 205 students.The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) program was used for data analysis of the questionnaire responses.The final data were used to test the hypothesis of the research using the Chi-Squared method applied to a frequency table.Results revealed that students have positive attitudes towards using mobiles phones and that they were very interested in learning English by using technology.

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