Tech2Talk: o desenvolvimento de habilidades orais por meio de tecnologias digitais

Abstract

One of the main challenges that might emerge from learning English is speaking the language. Given that, this research addresses an online course held on Moodle platform. It was a 6-week course offered in the second semester of 2017 to 30 students from different graduation courses at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. The research aimed to investigate affordances (GIBSON, 1986) present in digital tools to the development of oral English skills. To analyze the affordances, actions and activities from teachers and students were taken into account as well as the multiple nature of linguistic interactions (VAN LIER, 2000, 2002). Thus, the affordances were perceived differently by each participant because of their distinct backgrounds. In this research, some of the affordances remarked by the students were: possibility to increase vocabulary, to practice pronunciation and to lose the fear of speaking English. It is also worth noting that there were constraints such as technical issues when using certain tools. On the one hand, the schedule of the course was affected due to those matters, but on the other hand, they gave participants a sense of autonomy since they had to deal with those issues. Thus, it was possible to picture how the interactions and motivations of the students proved to be essential in virtual learning construction.