USING TECHNOLOGY
The smart way to use
smartphones in the
language classroom
Richard Pinner describes some of the benefits he has found in having smartphones
switched on in the classroom.
S
martphones and mobile
communication technology are
continuously evolving, becoming more
and more a part of everyday life. Love
them or hate them (and for many it
may be a bit of both), smartphones are
incredibly versatile pieces of technology.
At any one time, we can carry around in
our pockets a digital library of ebooks,
audio and visual files, not to mention apps
for education, entertainment or work. My
smartphone is not the newest model but
on there I have had Skype conversations
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n Volume 25 n Issue 3 www.modernenglishteacher.com 43
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an
with my family 6,000 miles away from the
park where I am walking my dog, I have
proofread articles and replied to urgent
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emails from colleagues and students,
I have even composed early drafts for
articles. I have also played games which
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help me to remember Japanese kanji,
and used the Japanese dictionary to help
me to maintain a conversation about
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difficult topics I am not used to speaking
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about in a language I am still learning. Of
course, I have also spent (or wasted) less
productive hours on my phone reading
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posts on Facebook or watching YouTube
videos that make me laugh. The fact of the
matter is that a smartphone is a powerful,
personalised communication tool which
allows connections between people and
information, and this can be harnessed
in the language classroom, if the right
approach is applied.
Initially, when smartphones started
to appear in students’ hands in my
classroom, I (like many teachers)
found them to be extremely irritating.
It was obvious that Student X at the
back of the classroom was not paying
attention to the instructions about the
task I was setting up; they were paying
more attention to their smartphone. It is
always obvious when a person checks
their phone in secret, and as teachers we
are naturally aware of our students in a
way that they often do not give us credit
for. The same is true of other social
situations; it is generally seen as bad
etiquette to ignore a person who you
are face-to-face with in favour of your
phone. There are several articles already
about how phones are ruining face-to-
face conversations (Drago, 2015), and
from my own personal experience this
is not hard to see why. When I worked
in a language school in London I often
had to resort to taking students’ phones
away from them in order to keep them
focused on the class. My friends who
are teachers in High Schools in both
Japan and England have also reported
 USING TECHNOLOGY
this, with one friend telling me that her
school collects all the students’ phones
in a box before the lesson can even
begin! However, if used in the right way,
smartphones can be a very useful tool to
support and extend language learning
opportunities, precisely because they
are designed as communication tools.
There are simply thousands of apps for
education, and a large proportion of
these are dedicated to learners who use
multiple languages. If you are not sure
which of these to use, why not turn that
into a task for the class and have the
students try them out and present their
reviews to the class. The students could
put it to the vote after their research
presentations. The chosen app might
then be used for homework assignments.
It would not only be very informative
for everybody, but also empowering for
the students to have a direct input on
the way the class is taught or the choice
of materials to use for class. This is also
a good way for teachers who feel less
tech-savvy to take further steps towards
a blended classroom environment, in
which technology has a comfortable
and supportive supplementary role.
One of the most obvious and effective
ways of using smartphones in the class
that I have had enormous success with,
is to use them to allow students to go on
a mini-webquest when I am introducing
something or activating schemata about
a topic. For example, I might ask my class
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‘Have you ever heard of David Bowie?’
and right there and then, using their
smartphones the students can quickly
do a search for the late, great Starman
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and find out enough about him to move
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into the next stage of the task. Students
who already know about the topic can
still benefit from this by checking certain
facts, and then of course the group
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discussion can take place as usual with
smartphones safely back in the students’
bags. I have had unexpected benefits
from this approach, for example in a class
for the English Literature department
where I work, I asked the students to
learn something about Raymond Carver
(the American short-story writer) and
one student learned that it would have
been his birthday on that day. These
serendipitous moments add what Freda
Mishan (2005) calls ‘currency’ to the
44 www.modernenglishteacher.com n Volume 25
tasks; an element of authenticity which is can join. This has many advantages,
dependent on time-relevance. Of course, such as very accurate monitoring and
this achieves nothing which could not instant feedback. The teacher can see
already be done in a CALL room, but who has done the tasks and what their
here the smartphones are simply a handy score was without having to do any
tool rather than the computers being the marking or checking of homework with
central medium in which to conduct the a red pen. Many leading textbooks also
class. These schematising mini-webquests offer apps and media content specific
can also be more flexible than CALL room to their units, and this might be a more
time as they require almost no forward engaging type of out-of-class activity to
planning and can be done on the fly. set for homework than photocopying the
activity book. A further advantage is that
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Smartphones are not only potential these activities can be done whilst busy
tools for use during the class, they students are on the move, although this
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can also be very useful for self-access may have implications for the amount
learning and homework type activities, of cognitive engagement they can invest
as I touched upon earlier. Many teachers and retention. Although mobile learning
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have accounts with apps such as (mLearning) is a popular buzz word and
Quizlet, which allows the creation of has some success reported in the research
vocabulary flashcards and multiple- (Cavus & Ibrahim, 2009; Stockwell, 2007),
choice questions. Teachers can set up I am still rather sceptical about how
an
classes in Quizlet which their students deeply we can learn something while on
the move. However, having the option
allows for a more flexible approach and
“Where I teach
ing
accommodates students with different
lifestyles and learning preferences.
in Tokyo, it does In a similar way, it might be useful to
seem that in the
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set up a Virtual Learning Environment
(VLE) such as Moodle, or create a free
past five years
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class learning site using a service such as
the number of Weebly, edublogs or SchoolRack. If you
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use PowerPoint (or another presentation
students holding platform such as Prezi) then you can
set up ‘remote presenting’ which allows
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smartphones students (either in the classroom or at
home) to follow your slides on their
with unlimited smartphone whilst you are presenting.
packages and with
This could be useful for large classes or
other situations where the slides need to
access to high- be made more accessible, for example if
students are sight impaired (see Robert
speed internet
Lowe’s article in ETp for further practical
suggestions for sight-impaired students).
has increased This way also can be a step towards a
to such a high paper-free classroom, something the
environment and future generations
percentage that will thank you for (or so we are led to
believe, as I will return to later).
if the students
Another useful way to use smartphones
come to class, in the class is to incorporate them
they are almost into information-gap tasks. Instead of
preparing two versions of a handout,
guaranteed to Partner A can simply visit one link and
Partner B visits another. I have taken this
be carrying their further also, and put students in groups
where they each watch a different video
smartphones.” or listen to a different song, and then the
n Issue 3

group describes the video; and when
we watch them all back as a class, the
groups have to match the other groups’
descriptions to their videos. Tasks like
this would not have been possible if it
were not for the students all having their
own personal media-viewing device.
This brings me to one of the possible
limitations with using smartphones
as a whole-class activity. I have had a
few classes where one or two students
do not have a smartphone, and in this
case it can seem rather awkward. If one
student does not have the smartphone
because they cannot afford one, then it
could raise issues of discrimination and
this might prove to be problematic. It is
therefore worth checking beforehand
what percentage of your class has a
smartphone. Also, some students may be
on limited packages and the amount of
their data usage needed for classroom
tasks may also cause problems. Needless
to say, many classrooms may be in areas
where the reception is weak or limited
as well, which would make a class
based around streaming video into a
quagmire of frustration. Of course, the
number of smartphone users and the
network facilities and packages on offer
are very contextually dependent, and
therefore many of these ideas will need
to be tested and adapted to each country
or teaching context. Where I teach in
Tokyo, it does seem that in the past five
years the number of students holding
smartphones with unlimited packages
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and with access to high-speed internet
has increased to such a high percentage
that if the students come to class, they
are almost guaranteed to be carrying
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their smartphones.
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Not only are smartphones becoming
more ubiquitous, but also many schools
in developed nations are now offering
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iPads and other tablets for students to use
in class, and these often come with a host
of apps and online tools to use both in-
class and for self-access study. These are
reported to be particularly beneficial to
students with special needs (Ellis, 2011).
Such institutions need to not only supply
the hardware, but they also need to
provide training and support for teachers
and students alike in terms of how to get
the most out of these technological tools.
The institutions also need to provide a
n Volume 25 n Issue 3 www.modernenglishteacher.com 45
robust wireless network so all the end
users can access the internet at the
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same time and do the high-bandwidth-
dependent tasks which educational
apps usually require. Needless to say,
although it is becoming more common for
students to receive tablets as part of their
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enrolment, it is still much less common
to see them being used effectively as
an integrated part of the classroom.
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Schaffhauser (2013) has a useful article
with tips about how to effectively adapt
the personal iPad design so that it can
be at an institution. However, at this
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early stage, it can often seem daunting
to people to move the classroom too far
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away from the traditional models which
require people to interact with either
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books or each other. Many teachers,
parents and even students are likely to ask
‘what’s the point?’ if they are looking at a
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screen when a piece of paper would do
the same job.
In summary, smartphones are certainly
finding a place in the classroom practices
for language teachers and learners, and
they offer versatility and flexibility of tasks.
They also offer a distraction from what
students should be doing, but I feel that
this is not particularly made worse by
students. Ten years ago, I had to call out
students for looking out of the window
too much, and I still have students doing
homework for other classes when they
should be working on the task I have set.
Smartphones are often given the blame for
taking away students’ attention, but this
may not be entirely a new phenomenon.
In my experience, smartphones are
certainly something to utilise for language
learning, and as technology moves
forward I feel more and more language
teachers will be grateful of them for the
opportunities they can offer for language
USING TECHNOLOGY
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learning, both in the classroom and for
supplementary study.
References
Cavus N & Ibrahim D (2009) m-Learning: An
experiment in using SMS to support learning
new English language words. British Journal
of Educational Technology 40 (1) 78–91. doi:
10.1111/j.1467-8535.2007.00801.x
Drago E (2015) The Effect of Technology
on Face-to-Face Communication. The Elon
Journal of Undergraduate Research in
Communications 6 (1) 13–19.
Ellis S (2011) Teaching the future: How iPads
are being used to engage learners with
special needs. Screen Education 63 60–64.
Lowe R (2015) Integrating blind students.
English Teaching Professional July (99) 16–18.
Mishan F (2005) Designing Authenticity into
Language Learning Materials. Bristol: Intellect
Books.
Schaffhauser D (2013) Tips for effectively
managing your iPad classroom. THE Journal
(Technological Horizons In Education) 40
(5) 7.
Stockwell G (2007) Vocabulary on the move:
Investigating an intelligent mobile phone-
based vocabulary tutor. Computer Assisted
Language Learning 20 (4) 365–383. doi:
10.1080/09588220701745817
Richard Pinner has been working in ELT
since 2004 and is currently an assistant
professor at Sophia University in Tokyo
as well as a part-time PhD candidate
at the University of Warwick, where he
is examining the relationship between
authenticity and motivation. He has
recently published articles in English Today
and Language Teaching Research, and
has a forthcoming monograph entitled
Reconceptualising Authenticity for English as
a Global Language (Multilingual Matters).