Multitasking and smartphones usage in the classroom and during instruction affect attention and therefore impact second language acquisition among high school students

Abstract

It is paramount to understand the relationship between multitasking, smartphone usage, and the impact on attention and Second Language Acquisition as of now, in the classroom, and the impact that it may have on academic performance among High School students. Is it possible to multitask in the classroom by attending the smartphone and the teacher’s speech simultaneously? The notion of High School students is that they can do two or even three tasks simultaneously. Students believe that they can attend to their smartphone; read and write text messages, talk to his/her neighbor, and pay attention to instruction, which is starting to become the new trend nowadays (Dhanasekaran et al., 2017). It is unseemly to be aware of all these distractions which means a switch of actions that ultimately affects learning (Chen & Yan, 2016). Technological devices such as laptops, tables, and specifically smartphones present educational opportunities, however it can also create learning problems, (Junco, 2012). Explicitly, multitasking with smartphones can interfere with learning process (Sana et al., 2013), attention is affected when switching actions instantly such as reading, and writing text messages on the smartphone, and then paying attention to instruction at the same time. However, it is not possible to do both actions (Schmidt, 2001), and even three actions simultaneously; students need to put on hold one action to start another. In this case specifically to read a text message even in fractions of a second requires full attention and at the same time to write a text message in seconds requires full attention, therefore, attention to instruction is put on hold. It would be unlikely to perform both actions simultaneously (Schmidt, 1995), still, the notion of multitasking is most likely to be believable among students.