Integrating incidental vocabulary learning using PDAs into academic studies: Undergraduate student experiences

Abstract

In higher education literature, no in-depth studies have been identified that investigate the value of integrating incidental vocabulary learning using mobile devices into undergraduate students' academic studies. This one-year multiple-case study investigated undergraduate students' dictionary and other uses of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) to enhance their incidental vocabulary learning in an English-medium (EM) university. The research findings show that the students made a variety of uses of PDAs to improve their vocabulary learning in the course of academic studies both in- and after class. The research results indicate that PDAs can be used in more flexible, novel and extended ways for English as a foreign language (EFL) vocabulary teaching and learning in both informal and informal learning environments in higher education. © 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.