Learner’s experience on the use of mobile device for autonomous listening: A narrative inquiry

Abstract

As the revolutionary approach in education, the use of mobile devices for learning undoubtedly has a great influence on the students’ academic success. Many studies have found that these tools are satisfying in terms of authenticity, simplicity, and portability allowing learners to promote their learning autonomy in which they can study anywhere and anytime. Using the lens of narrative inquiry, this study explored the student's experience in using mobile devices for autonomous listening activities and investigated the benefits of these activities for her language competences.  Interview and narrative frame proposed by Barkhuizen (2014) are used to answer the research questions. The findings show that the learner mostly does extensive listening activities in which she listens to a large amount of understandable and pleasurable spoken expressions through her devices. Having sophisticated software and great immersion, these tools allow the learner to have massive listening input which develops her vocabulary and basic comprehension. Different from analog tools used in her first listening experience, these tools devote thousands of listening applications and provide thousands of listening sources like live streams, English songs, news, or videos that can be accessed effortlessly.  However, it is also revealed that it affects the learner's psychological factors; learning motivation, confidence, and self-efficacy.