INVESTIGATING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF USING WHATSAPP APPLICATION IN THE PRONUNCIATION OF TURKISH WORDS

Müzeyyen Aykaç Erdoğan, Öykü Altan

Mugla Sitki Kocman University, Turkey

[email protected]            

1.Technology in Teaching

For decades the attitude towards language teaching has been shifting ( Dudeney & Hockly, 2007) owing to the revolutionary changes technology has brought to the field of education. Education is no more classroom- dependent, by means of technology integration it goes beyond the classrooms. (Martin & Ertzberger, 2013 ; Cavus & İbrahim, 2009) Spread of technology integration has affected both teachers and learners of this generation. Today’s teachers and learners are not the same as the teachers and learners of the past generation.

The shift has first started with the incorporation of technology into our personal lives and continued with our professional lives.  The older generation has shaped the lives of the young generation with technology and sharpened their lives by providing increasing presence of technology linked devices, platforms and systems( Dudeney & Hockly, 2007).  Then we have adapted our methods into technology assisted teaching so that we could hook learners’ attention. This was more like a vicious circle. We have provided them with technology and then we have used technology to attract them (Levy & Kennedy, 2005 ). It has both merits and demerits but the result is that technology is now an integrated part of our curricular activities in our teaching programs and we are training teachers to teach through technology (Dudeney & Hockly, 2007)

2. MALL in Language Teaching and MALL’s Merits

All disciplines have used their learners’ interests, confidence and comfort in technology as a motive and integrated technology into teaching many subject areas such as maths, biology ,history, literature and language. The trend has started with the use of computers and continued with the involvement of mobile devices as the use of mobile computing provides great amount of accessibility, immediate response availability and opportunity for interaction  regardless of time and place restriction (Ogata & Yano, 2005;  Miangah & Nezarat, 2012). Like in other subject areas, in language teaching mobile learning has also become a popular research area (Stockwell, 2010). It is used to enhance the language proficiency of learners and is used in vocabulary acquisition, written, oral comprehension ( Nino, 2015)  phonetics (Miangah & Nezarat, 2012) and also in the practice of listening and speaking skills

 ( Bachore, 2015).

M- learning is considered to be the e-learning of next generation with the features it provides for teachers and learners. Mobile devices give the users the easiness for portability, connectivity, and interactivity (Miangah & Nezarat, 2012 ) which are among the prior preferences of every teacher and learner involved in learning. Furthermore they are inexpensive and everyone knows their basic use. All these capabilities  and notably having the opportunity to extend teaching outside class attract  teachers and  learners and make mobile assisted learning by far among the  most popular phenomena in teaching.

3. MALL in Teaching Pronunciation

Teaching Pronunciation is known to be one of the hardest skills to teach as it is commonly treated to be inferior to other skills and requires extra practice outside class. Mobile learning, providing the opportunity for extended learning, creates the necessary amount of time for the practice of pronunciation but its effectiveness is still a question mark as there are few studies that have investigated this obscurity (Saran & Seferoglu & Cagıltay , 2009). In one study multimedia messages are used to improve the quality of language learners’ pronunciation of words. It is claimed that using mobile phones for the improvement of pronunciation has had a good impact on learners.

In this study we have aimed to investigate the effectiveness of a mobile application, what’s app, to enhance the quality of the pronunciation of some Turkish words. The results were realtively positive.

4.Research Method

4.1-Participants: This experimental study was carried out with 12 participants.

Eight of them were university students coming from different European countries. They were incoming Erasmus students who were studying in different faculties  at Muğla university. However, they came together in Turkish course. There were 3 German, 2 French, 1Georgian,1 Czech, 1 Italian students.

Two of the participants were working as English lecturers at Muğla University. One of them was from Ukraine, the other was from the United States of America.

Two of them were Spanish and working in an International Youth Center in Muğla. They came to Turkey via European Voluntary Service.

All participants were chosen among the volunteers with regard to their Turkish level. Their Turkish language level was end of A2.

They were three males and nine females and their age ranged from 21 to 51.

The first meeting occured as face to face and the participants were informed about the study. They attended a workshop on how to join the study. In the first meeting the phone numbers of the participants were collected to create a whatsapp group. Other explanations and meetings occured in virtual environment.

Starting point of this study was that the participants were having problems in learning the pronunciation of some Turkish letters in the alphabet and in some simple sayings including these letters.

For the sake of learning/ teaching a new language effectively, we believe that learning environment can be created everywhere, not just in classrooms. Therefore, with the increased use of mobile technologies which enable language learners to practice their sub-skills such as grammar, vocabularyand pronunciation, we decided to use whatsapp as an instructional tool outside the classroom environment. Via whatsapp, learners can make good use of the facilities to listen to audio at any time as well as the “ always on” charecteristics of portable devices which encourage spontaneous interaction (Kukulska-Hulme, A. 2006). What’s more, they also record their own voice while imitating the correct pronunciation of a Turkish word.

1.   The data for this study was collected via three different instruments.

a- Diagnosic-test: In the first meeting, participants were delivered a test including the Turkish alphabet on it and were asked to choose the letters they were having problems with. They were also asked to write the most challenging words they found difficult to produce and spell so far. After collecting the test, we determined the problematic letters and some words or phrases:

Turkish Letters found to be difficult

b- Smartphone Whatsapp voice message function: Imitative approach was used. Lecturers and Turkish learners recorded their voices by using whatsapp voice message function.

c- The survey questionnaire: At the end of the study, an online questionnaire was created in a google survey form and questionnaire link was delivered via both emails and whatsapp group.

There were totally 20 questions as 12 multiple choice (likert scale), 4 open-ended , 4 yes/no questions. At the end of the questionnaire, voluntary learners could add their comments.

Ten participants out of twelve responded to the questionnaire.

1. This experimental study was carried out for five days. Each day, I and my partner, as native speakers and lecturers of Turkish, read 6 Turkish  words and phrases. We recorded them in whatsapp voice message and sent them to the group.After each word or phrase, we also wrote them by using text message function in whatsapp and sent them too. Each participant in whatsapp group got the voice & text message, listened and pronunced the words/phrases correctly, namely they tried to imitate what they heard. However, they did not have to write the words.

Data was analysed regarding to the research question below:

* Is using whatsapp voice message an effective instructional tool to learn pronunciation of some difficult words in Turkish?

We analyzed the questionnaire calculating percentages for each item in the scale questions:

a-Scale Questions:

The responses given in likert scale questions showed that participants enjoyed being in a whatsapp group. They mostly thought that using whatsapp recordings helped them to improve and learn correct pronunciation. They supported that chosen words or phrases were the most problematic ones and enabled them to correct their mispronunciation. They found using whatsapp voice message was more fun, less stressful than classroom environment. However, 60% percent of the participants indicated that they didn’t think using whatsapp voice message was more practical and accessible than using in a classroom environment. 60 % of them also reported that whatsapp voice message didn’t help them in remembering their Turkish vocabulary better.

b-Open-ended Questions:

The responses given to open-ended questions indicated that most of the participants think that listening themselves speaking Turkish with good pronunciation was good enough to be proud of themselves, and they think that pronuncing the words alone was better than pronuncing that word in a sentence and they also think that using whatsapp was more practical,accessible and more fun than using other mobile application as an instructional tool outside classroom.

c-Yes/No Questions:

The responses given to these questions showed that 90% of the participants think that using text messages as well as voice messages not only helped them to learn the correct pronunciation of the words but also helped them to learn the correct spelling of these words. 60% of them think that using online sources is not better than using whatsapp, 20% of them think that it is useful. The responses also showed that 70% of the participants think that listening to other participants’ pronunciation help them improve their pronunciation and 100% of them think that listening teacher’s recordings help improve their pronunciation.

In the comments part, one participant said that it was disturbing that they got many messages at the same time and one of them also mentioned it would be better if the teachers put the translation of the words.

5. Limitation of the Study:

First, it would have been better to conduct the study for a longer period with more participants. 5 day period was not enough to determine the effectiveness of whatsapp or any other mobile application. Second, it would have been more reliable if there had been pilot and experimental groups. Lastly, instead of creating just one whatsapp group, there should have been 3 or 4 groups in order to prevent  from getting bulk voice messages at one time. It might create an effective language learning environment both for teachers and participants.

6. Conclusion and Implications:

The findings of the study indicated that using whatsapp as an instrucional activity might be an effective tool in learning pronunciation of Turkish words. As for the questionnaire results, responses of the participants were relatively positive in terms of hearing their own voices,accessibility,fun and ease of use. However, getting many messages at one time is considered as disturbing  and don’t help participant remember pronunciation of the words better.

Although it is difficult to draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of whatsapp with only five day period of use,the current study seems to support that mobile applications have the potential to become effective and instructional tools for language learning as other researchers have emphasized (Chinnery, 2006,Park,2013, Sandberg et al.,2011,Stockwell,2010)