The study we’re going to present is called  “Effects of Mobiled-Assisted Language  

Learning on EFL/ESL Reading Comprehension” The author is Rui Li and it’s submitted  

in 2021. And published in 2022, In the  Journal: Educational technology and Society. 

The first Key term we chose is “MALL”,  It refers to Mobiled-Assisted Language  

Learning. Using device Such as ”smartphones,  tablets, PDAs to help students learn a language. 

And ”Reading Comprehension” because this  study is focused on how MALL effects on EFL  

/ESL student’s reading comprehension. Then ,it’s meta-analysis. Although, there are many  

studies about how using MALL impacts on L2 reading  comprehension, the synthesized empirical evidence  

is still lacking. And compared with the empirical  studies, meta-analysis results are more reliable  

and generalizable, as they are based on results  of multiple studies and increased sample sizes. 

What evidence is summarized? The related primary studies were  

searched from several electronic online databases  such as web of science, Science Direct, Scopus,  

and ERIC and search engines like Google  Scholar and Baidu Scholar. Then, by using a  

combination of MALL-related and reading-related  keywords integrated with Boolean operators. 

As a result, there were 81 studies identified  from the initial literature retrieval. Then  

there were 21 studies were finalized for  meta-analysis with the criteria below. 

First, publications that were written  in English were confined to 2000–2020.  

This time range was chosen because MALL  technologies remained few before 2000. 

Second, the study should adopt a form of MALL  technologies. Such as mobile phones, PDAs,  

computer tablets or e-readers for EFL/ESL  reading comprehension. Those studies that  

failed to use technologies or used MALL  technologies on first or other foreign  

language reading comprehension were excluded. Third, the publications should contain sufficient  

statistics for data calculation or transformation  of aggregated overall effect sizes. And the  

qualitative research was excluded, such  as learner’s attitudes or perceptions. 

Then, the researchers designed  a coding scheme according to  

the identification of the publications,  the characteristics of the participants,  

theoretically relevant features of the study and measured variables. They yielded  

24 effect sizes as independent  studies out of the 21 studies. 

Why were there only 21 studies but  24 effect sizes? Because multiple  

effect sizes reported in a single publication  involved different participants or different  

types of measurement were coded separately  to ensure the reliability of the analyses.

For instance, a quasi-experimental design  that compared two experimental groups and  

one control group. The effect sizes were coded  separately, since EFL learners of the experimental  

groups that involved different participants  used a mobile language management system,  

while those of the control group  adopted the traditional approach.

Furthermore, they excluded the  extreme effect sizes that were  

more than 3 standard deviations from the  mean of all the effect sizes. Finally,  

they yielded 20 effect sizes as independent  studies for the final analysis out of 17 studies.