Mobile-assisted and gamification-based language learning: a systematic literature review

Abstract

Learning a new language is a challenging task. In many countries, students are encouraged to learn an international language at school level. In particular, English is the most widely used international language and is being taught at the school level in many countries. The ubiquity and accessibility of smartphones combined with the recent developments in mobile application and gamification in teaching and training have paved the way for experimenting with language learning using mobile phones. This article presents a systematic literature review of the published research work in mobile-assisted language learning. To this end, more than 60 relevant primary studies which have been published in well-reputed venues have been selected for further analysis. The detailed analysis reveals that researchers developed many different simple and gamified mobile applications for learning languages based on various theories, frameworks, and advanced tools. Furthermore, the study also analyses how different applications have been evaluated and tested at different educational levels using different experimental settings while incorporating a variety of evaluation measures. Lastly, a taxonomy has been proposed for the research work in mobile-assisted language learning, which is followed by promising future research challenges in this domain.