Mobile App Evaluation: Grammar and Practice for Business

This summer I will be teaching a new class for some of the administrative staff at the university here. The class is on professional writing. For the mobile app evaluation assignment, I explored various business communications apps. Because the class I'll be teaching is a writing course and grammar is a significant concern for the staff and the university, I looked for apps that might be more related to writing rather than conversation. As we have been reading for the CALL class about the uniqueness of mobile apps in allowing for language learning from most any location at any time, I thought that an app might be useful for my busy students.

The Grammar and Practice for Business app, by Harper Collins publishers, is available at the App store and is designed for business students and professionals at the pre-intermediate and intermediate levels of English. I looked at version 1.1, which has a size of 25.7 MB, and was last updated on 10/12/2013. The language focus is on grammar.

Each of the two levels costs 720 Yen (about $6.00). I examined the intermediate level in whole and the free parts of the pre-intermediate level using Jeong-Bae Son's criteria, presented on his review form.

Overall Rating: 3 Adequate (Acceptable with reservation)

1.)Presentation and Organization: very satisfactory. The app opens to a contents page, from which students can choose to view the introduction, which offers information about the app, its organization and the authors; the pre-intermediate study level; the intermediate study level; or the student's test scores. Within each level, there is another menu of grammatical concepts, as shown below:

By tapping on a particular area of grammar study, a new menu of study units appears. In the intermediate level, in the Verbs 3 section, the following units shown below on the screenshot can be studied. If the student wishes to study verbs of reporting, for example, by tapping on that unit, the student can then choose to look at reference materials, to do practice exercises on reporting verbs, or to take the test, as shown on the screenshot below.

Each area of grammatical study is nicely presented and organized this way.

2.) Purpose and Accuracy: very satisfactory. The introduction to the app makes its purpose very clear and explains the source of the app's content and its relevance to this purpose; the grammar exercises are drawn from the Collins corpus of continuously updated illustrations of language use from real sources, oral and written,

3.) Authenticity: satisfactory. As the materials for the exercises come from real business situations, the contexts for these exercises are real. Some of the activities involve editing. Some involve writing or changing the form of a single word or phrase in sentences in larger texts. These activities may be authentic in that editing and considerations of word choice and form are real parts of business writing and communication. Other activities involve single sentences, completing single sentences, or multiple choice explanations for the grammar. These activities focus on understanding the grammar. They are authentic uses of language but isolated from context.

4.) Usefulness: very satisfactory. The app is useful in providing grammar practice with exercises using business vocabulary and situations. The grammar is organized into very specific segments, allowing students to study and practice that segment before moving on to another. In addition to the study units, the app provides other kinds of useful information related to both grammar and business. Both levels include sections on grammatical terms that define grammar terminology, each level providing terms appropriate for that level.

The pre-intermediate level also includes a business files resource, including information on industries, currencies, and business abbreviations. The intermediate level includes additional appendices on grammar. For example, there is a list of phrasal verbs; when a verb is tapped, a sample sentence appears.

5.) Flexibility: neutral. The app is flexible in that students can select which areas of grammar they wish or need to study and practice. As mentioned above, the grammar is organized into very specific segments. The app, however, does not offer a variety of learning modes or collaborations with others.

6.) Engagement: neutral. The app is interesting in the variety of kinds of written grammar activities it presents. For example,

The student is active in thinking about the situation presented in many exercises and responding appropriately, and a green check mark appears when s/he taps the "check" tab and responds correctly. However, that is the extent of interaction in the app.

7.) Support: very satisfactory. The app provides support by including a reference section for each of the grammatical units, The reference section has three pages: a.) sample sentences, b.) form, and c.) uses. It is presented and written very well. In addition, while the student does the practice exercises, s/he can tap on the "grammar" tab in the upper right corner to bring up the reference pages as needed. There is also a "reveal" tab at the bottom of the page, which shows the student the answer, if needed. (See screenshots above for tab locations.)

8.) Feedback: neutral. The app provides immediate feedback to each practice question/task when the student taps the "check" tab. When the student completes a test, the score is presented, indicating which specific exercise task or question was correct and which was not. The student may tap on a "review" tab to return to that specific exercise task. S/he may try again or hit the "reveal" tab, if needed. This app did not provide specific explanation regarding the correct answer for the tasks. The "Test Scores" section records the scores for each test, even if taken multiple times. The test tasks, however, were not different from the practice tasks; they just didn't offer the tabs for grammar, check, reveal as the practice activities did. A test with different tasks would be more significant as a measure of student understanding and use of grammar.

9.) Navigation and Reliability: neutral. Although this app is well-organized and navigation works well for the most part, there are a few reliability issues that come up occasionally, making navigation a little frustrating. Occasionally, the screen appears blank after tapping or swiping on it. Then the student has to start the unit all over, swiping carefully so that the screen doesn't go blank. A couple times, there just wasn't any screen image at all.

10.) Multimedia: very unsatisfactory. The app has some color to it. It's subtle and appropriate for a business grammar app. However, it does not offer any video or audio. While the range of written activities is quite varied, the app is not multimodal.

To conclude, this app could be improved by providing video, as well as text, of the many dialogues it offers, either to initially present the dialogue before the student then does the task or as means of checking the student's work after doing the task. Similarly, other passages offered in the grammar activities, such as explanations of charts or reports, could be presented as audio, in addition to the text.

While I think this app can provide some good practice when my students have a few minutes here or there, because of the price, I would offer this app as an option --rather than suggesting they buy it. While I looked at many apps before choosing this one to evaluate, I would like to explore others as well that might be more engaging for my students.