Development of a mobile English speaking app for middle school students: Speaking English Jr

The purpose of this study is to introduce the development process and the outcome of an English speaking application (app), Speaking English Jr., designed for Korean middle school students. The app is based on the Korean national curriculum and is designed to help students to practice their spoken English. This paper introduces the structural design of the speaking app, and the features of each functions that were developed based upon the stake-holders’ needs. This paper also attempted to examine the level of satisfaction from 288 student participants in 15 different Korean middle schools, by conducting a questionnaire to examine their perceptions and experience about using the English speaking app after eight weeks. Descriptive statistics and one-way and two-way ANOVA were implemented to analyse the quantitative data. The results show that, overall, a majority of students in both areas were satisfied with the program as a supplement for their English speaking practices. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for developing efficient English language speaking programs and ways to apply those programs to develop the English speaking proficiency of Korean middle school students are proposed.