Arabic Language Teachers Teach and Collaborate through Mobile Instant Messaging: Analysis of Use, Benefits, and Challenges in Jordan Suad A. Alwaely Department of Curriculum and Instruction (C&I), The Hashemite University, Zarqa, Jordan Abstract—The current study aimed to examine Arabic language teachers’ perceived competence, use, benefits, and challenges of WhatsApp use as an educational tool. A questionnaire as a quantitative data collection method was used. The findings revealed that participants had different levels of WhatsApp integration skills, with 44% of them being advanced or expert and 56% being intermediate or beginner users. The study also found that participants used WhatsApp primarily for sharing and accessing language materials and for chatting purposes. It was also revealed that participants perceived WhatsApp as a beneficial collaborative language educational tool. Yet, participants identified a number of challenges, such as requiring extra effort and time to use, digital divide, students’ improper use, smartphones’ screen size, and failure to deliver effective instruction. Index Terms—Arabic, instant messaging, mobile technology, use, teachers, WhatsApp I. INTRODUCTION The use of such mobile technologies as smartphones and their apps, which is revealed by the high rate of ownership of those devices among teachers and students, has been rising speedily (So, 2016). This technology that allows teachers and students access to a variety of resources via Wi-Fi, cellular data plans, or Internet connections has the power to change teaching and learning, with excessive potential both inside and outside the classroom (Sung, Chang, & Liu, 2016). It is used in a variety of teaching and learning settings, with numerous positive impacts, including increasing autonomous and self-paced individual learning (Domingo & Garganté, 2016; Lu, Meng, & Tam, 2014), providing a variety of authentic learning settings (Boticki, Baksa, Seow, & Looi, 2015), enhancing enjoyment and promoting motivation to learn (Furió, Juan, Seguí, & Vivó, 2015), facilitating immediate access to digital content (Domingo & Garganté, 2016; Murphy, 2011) and fostering interaction and communication (Churchill & Wang, 2014). A very popular example of smartphone apps is WhatsApp instant messaging. It is an app that can be categorized as quasi-synchronous communication (So, 2016). WhatsApp is the number-one mobile messaging app, which enables users to exchange messages across the world at no cost (Mwakapina, 2016). In addition to exchanging short, typed texts, WhatsApp supports sharing hyperlinks, multimedia content, support group communication, and social interaction (So, 2016; Vrocharidou & Efthymiou, 2012). Research literature revealed that language education can be improved by creating a wide range of valuable and effective learning activities facilitated by the use of WhatsApp (Aburezeq & Ishtaiwa, 2013; Hamad, 2017; Maria, 2016; Plana et al., 2013). Just like with any other technological application, teachers have a fundamental role to play to ensure the success of integrating that application as a fundamental part of their teaching. With their attempts to adopt WhatsApp as an example of mobile instant messaging apps for educational purposes, identifying teachers’ percepti ons towards the benefits and challenges of WhatsApp might be a driving factor to support their use (Baek, Zhang, & Yun, 2017). Even with wide popularity of WhatsApp among teachers and students, there is very limited research on the use of the app for educational purposes, especially related to Arabic language education. As a consequence, this study aims to explore the Arabic language teachers’ perceptions and use of WhatsApp as a tool to support their teaching practice in Jordan. II. LITERATURE REVIEW WhatsApp Instant Messaging as a Teaching Tool The widespread use of mobile devices among educators and students from all levels of education has attracted educators to the use of those devices to support the teaching-learning process (Dhir, Gahwaji, & Nyman, 2013; Ishtaiwa, 2014; Kinash, Brand, & Mathew, 2012). This attractiveness could be justified by the valuable features of smartphone apps that provide distinctive educational benefits. Such features include affordability, functionality (Kinash et al., 2012), movability, context sensitivity, social interactivity, connectivity, and independence (Klopfer, Squire, & Jenkins, 2002). With those features, the teaching-learning process has become more enjoyable, interesting, convenient, flexible, and ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 9, No. 5, pp. 961-969, September 2018 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/jltr.0905.09 © 2018 ACADEMY PUBLICATION