The application of Self-Determination Theory to support students learning Chinese as a second language independently: Educational technology and pedagogy

Abstract

Ethnic minority students (N=150) from 3 secondary schools in Hong Kong were invited to use a self-developed mobile app named “mLang” to learn ESL and CSL for one year. They were asked to create their own multilingual, multimodal e-flashcards under different topics that reflected their own experiences and worldviews (autonomy). With customised pedagogical designs, teachers supported their students’ use of e-flashcards as shared learning objects, which became part of their curriculum content for learning and sharing (relatedness). Through the participants’ interactions around the e-flashcards, they reported feeling self-competent, autonomous and socially-related in their ESL and CSL learning, implying development of self-determined motivation (Deci & Ryan, 1995). Following a design-based research (DBR) approach involving triangulation of quantitative and qualitative data from pre- and post-tests, lesson studies, interviews, and text analysis of students’ learning outcomes, it was found that the experimental group outperformed the control group significantly in reading and writing. The results showed that “mLang” had been able to multiply and energise the participants’ ESL and CSL vocabulary learning, while paving the way for faster transition to reading and writing (Loh, Shum & Ki, 2018).