Using Voice Recording Apps to Help Speaking Performance

Description

The rapid development of tools and resources developed by the ICT world presents opportunites and challenges for both teachers and learners. Teachers often complain about students’ “illicit” use of smartphones in class and forget about the possibilities they actually offer in the foreign language classroom, in many ways, replacing the functions of the old language labs. According to Ur (1996:120) “of all the four skills, speaking seems intuitively the most important” as “people who know a language are referred to as ‘speakers’ of that language.” The fact is that many students consider speaking one major challenge of foreign language learning and communication and one of the most important skills to develop in the EFL classroom. Nevertheless, it is the teacher’s responsibility to help students overcome these challenges and this is not always an easy task. The main focus of this study is that motivation tools such as dictaphone can be used to help create language awareness, allowing “the student to reflect on the process of language acquisition, learning and language use” (Bilash and Tulasiewicz, 1995: 49), which in turn will eventually help learners gain confidence and enhance their speaking skills.
The study explores the use of voice recorder apps in different pedagogical tasks (Nunan, 2004), which were used in a B1 EFL class at the Catholic University in Lisbon for a period of 6 weeks. Students were asked to make their own recordings and invited to reflect on the process of oral language acquisition by means of self-reflection charts. Data collection will be based on the recordings, the students’ charts and a final evaluation questionnaire.

Period	6 Dec 2018
Event title	l Jornadas de Inovação e Tecnologia no Ensino de Línguas
Event type	Conference
Location	Lisbon, PortugalShow on map