PAPER MOBILE EDUCATIONAL SMSS AS SUPPLEMENTARY MEANS TO TEACH SENTENCE PARAPHRASING IN EMP COURSE Mobile Educational SMSs as Supplementary Means to Teach Sentence Paraphrasing in EMP Course http://dx.doi.org/10.3991/ijim.v10i1.5188 Jafar Asgari Arani Kashan University of Medical Sciences, Kashan, Iran Abstract—Digital media has been used to enhance language learning for decades. Since the aim of language learning is to develop communicative proficiency, using communication devices and channels that already exist in the classroom is a sensible way of exploiting opportunities for language prac- tice. The ‘anywhere, anytime’ accessibility to educational contents that mobile SMSs, sometimes freely, offer users, means that mobile learning can extend the opportunities for study outside of the classroom. Given the importance of writing, especially for academic purposes in university, the study set a dual goal: firstly, to analyze the outcome of ap- plying supplementary SMS activity to teach English syntax necessary to paraphrase sentences and secondly, to clarify the medical students' ideas about it. A quasi-experimental, pre-test and post-test, research de- sign was utilized to investigate the hypotheses of this study. Two groups (each 40-second year students of medicine) were randomly assigned to be the experimental and the conventional group. Both groups were taught the same syllabus materials designed for English for Medical Purpos- es (EMP) II course in a 17-week semester in Kashan Univer- sity of Medical Sciences, Iran. The former received the SMS –based supplementary contents in a scheduled pattern of delivery two times a week to strengthen their learning while the latter only was taught in a face to face setting. An open questionnaire was used to examine students feedback to- wards their attitudes. The validity of the questionnaire was examined by giving to a number of professors of English language. The data were also collected and analyzed through an Attitude/ Motivation questionnaire consisting of 12 Likert-scale items, pretest& posttest, paired-samples t- tests, and one way ANOWA. The pretest and posttest data paired t-test likert-scale items analyzed results showed that differences between the exper- imental and control groups were statistically significant. It was found that the effect of practicing SMS on the students' English syntax learning was positive. According to the find- ings, students receiving the supplementary English syntax SMSs noticeably improved their sentence paraphrasing performance and acquired higher grades during the post- test than those in conventional group. Qualitative data from interviews and questionnaires indicate that students hold positive attitudes towards receiving paraphrase syntactic points via SMS. Majority of students in this pilot project considered the educational program offered to be efficient, useful and beneficial. The data gathered revealed mobile syntactic supplementary SMSs can be integrated into EMP II course to enable students to develop better English sen- tence paraphrasing skills. Index Terms—Mobile SMS; Sentence Paraphrasing; Educa- tional Tool; English for Medical Purposes I. INTRODUCTION With its widespread use and its features and functions such as mobility, reachability, localization, and personali- zation, mobile phone technology may lead to positive effects in learning environments. Using mobile phones in educational settings will help learners be more motivated and will make it possible to overcome the difficulties teachers experience in order to make learners start study- ing. Cognitive psychologists see language learning as a psy- chological process through which learners construct a mental model of language system based on the interaction of cognitive knowledge and comprehensible input. Some of the technologies that are used in cognitive approaches include text - reconstruction software, concordancing software, telecommunications, and multimedia simulation software (Warschauer & Meskill, 2000). Learners should have the opportunity to interact in an authentic social context in order to have access to comprehensible input and practice communications in which they will engage in real life (Warschauer & Meskill, 2000). SMS is the media used in this approach. It is possible to focus on limited amount of information, since too much amount of infor- mation can be confusing and discouraging. Besides, they are encouraging to students; because they can study the lessons provided them via SMS anytime and anywhere that they prefer. What is possible through SMS is spaced presentation, which is more effective than massed presen- tation. According to cognitive psychologists when two presentation of a piece of information are farther apart (spaced presentation), the learners' performance on memory test is significantly better than when the two presentations are close together (Thornton & Houser, 2005). Thornton and Houser (2005) conducted three stud- ies in a Japanese university. They studied the effects of SMS with three groups: paper, Web and SMS in which they concluded that the effect of the frequent study was more important than the quantity of materials presented in a lesson. II. REWIEV OF LITERATURE Baleghizadeh and Oladrostam (2010) during six ses- sions of instruction taught three grammatical categories to participants which at the end of the experiment a grammar test was administered to both groups the result of which showed that the mobile phone SMS helped the experi- iJIM ‒ Volume 10, Issue 1, 2016 45