The effect of mobile technology-supported functional grammar applications on academic achievement and reading comprehension skills and student opinions about the process

In this study, the effects of mobile technology supported functional grammar applications on sixth grade students' success in lexical structure and reading comprehension skills were examined and it was aimed to determine student views on the process. In the research, nested mixed design, which is one of the mixed methods in which qualitative and quantitative research methods are included, was used. The quantitative part of the research is a quasi-experimental research with a pre-test post-test control group. The qualitative part of the research was designed with a case study. The study group of the research consists of sixth grade students studying in a secondary school located in a city center with a small size in terms of population and area in the Western Black Sea Region of the Black Sea Region in the 2019-2020 academic year. In this context, two branches of the secondary school's sixth grade students were named as the "control" and "experimental" groups. The study group consists of 57 people, 28 of whom are experimental and 29 are control. The data collection tools in the research are "Word Structure Achievement Test", "Reading Comprehension Test" and "Semi-structured Interview Form". Web 2.0 tool, "LearningApps.org", and Turkish lesson practices in accordance with the Turkish Language Curriculum (MEB, 2019a) for seven weeks. In the control group, Turkish lessons in accordance with the Turkish Lesson Curriculum (MEB, 2019a) were taught. Quantitative data of the research; dependent groups t test, independent groups t test, Mann - Whitney U test. Qualitative data obtained with semi-structured interview forms were analyzed by content analysis method. According to the results of the research; Education based on functional grammar supported by mobile technology increased the reading comprehension skills and academic achievement of the experimental group students, and the relationship between grammar reading was demonstrated by an experimental study. In the experimental group, in which mobile technology supported functional grammar-based applications were applied, and in the control group, which was trained in line with the Turkish Lesson Curriculum (MEB, 2019a); When the final measurement scores of the Reading Comprehension Test for students' reading comprehension skills and the Vocabulary Structure Achievement Test for their academic achievement were compared, a statistically significant difference was found between the two groups in favor of the experimental group in terms of reading comprehension skills and academic achievements. After the experimental process of the research, the opinions of the students in the experimental group about the application and the process were taken. As a result of the students' opinions, it was determined that the students mostly did it again as the cognitive preparation before the application, they were mostly prepared for the application willingly as the affective preparation, and they mostly prepared the tools as the psychomotor preparation. The students expressed their positive views about the application and its process as "helping them learn the subject well" in terms of pedagogical aspect, "making learning fun" in terms of affective aspect, and "providing spatial independence" in terms of hardware. The students stated their negative views about the application and its process as "the number of activities is low" in terms of pedagogical aspect, "the fear of making mistakes" in terms of affective aspect, and "the speed of the internet network is slow" in terms of hardware. On the other hand, the solution suggestions of the students regarding the application and the process were mostly stated as "disseminating the use of mobile learning in different disciplines" in terms of pedagogy, "increasing the teacher-student interaction" in the affective aspect and "solving the internet network speed problem" in terms of hardware. Keywords: Grammar, functional grammar, mobile technology, reading comprehension.