Personalized review learning approach for improving behavioral engagement and academic achievement in language learning through e-books

Language learners' engagement with a specific task is crucial to improving their academic achievement. To enhance student engagement and academic achievement in language learning, personalized language learning (PLL) can be employed to consider individual learning needs. Personalized review learning has emerged to facilitate PLL as a promising means of enhancing the long-term preservation of skills and knowledge in language education. In this paper, a personalized review learning approach is proposed that improves behavioral engagement and academic achievement in language learning through e-books. It involves implementing an e-book system, namely BookRoll, which allows users to browse uploaded learning materials anytime and anywhere, in concert with a personalized review learning system based on repeated retrieval practice. To evaluate the effects of this approach, a quasi-experiment was conducted on two classes of sophomore undergraduate students majoring in accounting who were enrolled in a Japanese course. 47 students from one class were assigned to an experimental group, whereas 44 students from another class were assigned to a control group. The duration of the experiment was 8 weeks. The experimental group learned using both the e-book system and personalized review learning system, whereas the control group learned only using the e-book system. The experimental group significantly outperformed the control group in terms of both behavioral engagement and academic achievement. The findings indicate that the proposed approach enhanced the students' PLL experiences.