VietTESOL International Convention 2026

As English increasingly circulates through learners’ digitally mediated everyday lives, a key challenge in school-based English education is not exposure itself, but how to connect classroom learning more meaningfully with students’ out-of-class English engagement. This study investigates whether classroom-linked mobile learning, defined here as teacher-designed, mobile-mediated tasks intentionally aligned with ongoing lessons and extended into students’ everyday digital and social environments, can help build that connection in a Vietnamese high school context. Using a mixed-methods intervention design, the study was conducted as a one-group pretest-posttest quasi-experiment with qualitative components. Participants were 46 Grade 10 students at a public high school in Vietnam who completed a 10-week sequence of classroom-linked mobile tasks involving language noticing, micro-production, interaction, guided resource engagement, and transfer beyond class time. Data were generated from pre- and post-intervention questionnaires, student artefacts, semi-structured interviews, and teacher fieldnotes. The findings show positive shifts in students’ attitudes towards mobile-supported English learning, their reported out-of-class engagement with English, and their perceptions of connection between lesson content and everyday English use. Qualitative data further indicate that the intervention helped some students move from incidental exposure towards more purposeful noticing and use, while also revealing uneven uptake and differentiated forms of learner agency. Overall, the study suggests that the pedagogical value of mobile learning lies not in the technology itself, but in how it is designed to bridge classroom learning and everyday English engagement across settings.