The effects of hypermedia annotation types and learning styles on mobile assisted vocabulary learning , recall and retention

The use of technology in education in general and on ESL teaching and learning has gained great popularity among educators and scholars as there are many educational institutions adopting these new technologies in the conventional classroom environment. Mobile phones, tablets, computers and many diverse forms of information technologies are in use in today's foreign language learning environments. It is a widespread belief that learners have different styles in getting new information in language learning and the effectiveness of teaching without taking into account of these different styles is questionable. Among many components of language learning, vocabulary attracted much attention in language learning and teaching. This study concentrated on the effects of hypermedia annotation types and different learning styles on Mobile Assisted Vocabulary Learning. It first examined hypermedia annotation preferences of EFL learners with specific reference to different learning styles during a hypermedia reading text. Second it explored the relationship between annotation use and mobile assisted vocabulary learning and retention. Participants of the study were five tenth grade classes of a state high school. Two classes were chosen randomly as experimental group (n=49) which received Vocastyle Multimedia Vocabulary Learning Application, two classes were assigned as control group (n=48) which received paper-based annotation and the last class was assigned as pure control group (n=25) which received no annotation. Data for this study were obtained from (a) Log files which were driven from multimedia software (developed by the researcher), (b) Perceptual Learning Style Preference Questionnaire (Reid,J.,1984), (c) pretest, posttest and delayed vocabulary tests (developed by the researcher). Quantitative data analyses were done via descriptive statistics, chi-square, Manova and Kruskal-Wallis and Mann Whitney-U. The results indicated that participants preferred video, graphic, audio and text annotations respectively. While text and audio annotations were preferred mostly by auditory learners, the number of preference for graphic and video annotations is higher among visual learners. Significant difference was found between auditory learners and visual learners in terms of accessing annotation types. According to the MANOVA analysis, there were significant differences between mean difference scores of students in each group, revealing the effect of Vocastyle Application in both vocabulary recall and retention levels of participants. These results implied that learners who used multimedia annotations recalled and retained better than the learners who used paper based annotations and who received no treatment at all. Limitations of the study were discussed and pedagogical implications with suggestions for further research were given.