The use of smartphones in EFL (English as a Foreign Language) courses at Japanese universities has created opportunities for delivering level-appropriate content and affording the autonomous development of communication skills that can be used by students inside and outside of the classroom (Stockwell & Wang, 2024). In particular, learning platforms such as English Central, have been designed to take advantage of these affordances using video-based activities. Previous studies of English Central showed students’ self-regulatory behaviour (Giordano, 2020), and benefits during the Covid-19 university closures (Landsberry & Kato, 2023). However, anecdotal evidence also suggests that students begin to lose interest in the activities, particularly in their second year, and to see them as a chore rather than as learning opportunities. This study sought to clarify student satisfaction with English Central over two university academic years, in terms of ease of use, usefulness, interest and workload. 286 first and second year students responded to a Google Forms questionnaire asking about the ease of use of English Central, as well as how interesting the videos and tasks were. The results showed that first year students indicated that they found speaking tasks were more useful and interesting than that reported by second year students. Additionally, the videos were rated more favourably by first years than second years. This suggests that although the English Central app is interesting for students at first, it may require additional instructor support to maintain that interest.

Authors:
Robert Andrews, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan
Mayuko Matsuoka, Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan

About the Presenter(s)
Robert Andrews is an English Instructor at Kwansei Gakuin University, whose interests are in blended learning, pragmatics, philosophy, critical thinking and the foreign language effect.

Connect on ResearchGate
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Robert-Andrews-20

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