Smartphone English Language Learning Challenges: A Systematic Literature Review

Innovations and advancements in modern technologies have induced changes in every sphere of human activity, including education. Smartphones represent modern, state-of-the-art gadgets which aim at fostering the teaching and learning process of EFL (English as a foreign language) learners. Students may experience and enjoy considerable benefits of these smart devices such as ubiquity, portability, around the clock availability, or numerous technological features. Despite offering overwhelming advantages to language learners, both students and teachers need to take into account challenges they often meet and face. Being in its infancy, this phenomenon appears to be underexplored since majority of studies focus on benefits of mobile learning rather than on challenges. Concentrating on pitfalls, this review article attempts to examine original, peer-reviewed research articles written on smartphone English language learning challenges by reviewing pertinent articles in the two acknowledged databases, Scopus and Web of Science. The research results reveal that the reviewed studies contain identified drawbacks to varying degrees, while approximately one third of articles did not present any challenges. The detected pitfalls, such as smaller dimensions of smartphones, Internet connectivity issues, readiness level of both practitioners and learners, or unbalanced development of the four language skills (listening, reading, writing, speaking), are further addressed and discussed, followed by suggesting the possible solutions to these issues. Finally, it is emphasized that further research needs to be conducted in this regard to shed more light on challenges that both students and practitioners need to tackle.