Digital tools for the development of oral skills in English

• Autor(a) principal: Vera Lucia Menezes de Oliveira e Paiva
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Ronaldo Corrêa Gomes Junior
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Institucional da UFMG
• Texto Completo: https://doi.org/10.30473/idej.2019.6870; http://hdl.handle.net/1843/59176; https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9379-5698; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4165-8629
• topic: Virtual ethnography; Digital tools; Oral skills; Língua inglesa - estudo e ensino; Lingua inglesa - Pronúncia; Tecnologia educacional; Etnologia

This paper presents the results of a virtual ethnographic study developed in an online classroom in a public university in Brazil. The online activities aimed to help 70 students to develop English oral skills in a 60-hourcoursetaught along 15 weeks using the Moodle Language Management System (LMS). After the initial weeks, and some dropouts, there were 59 participants in this study. The course was planned and managed by the authors of this article and some modifications were made along the experience in face of changes in the learning environment. Having as theoretical support complexity, connectivism, and learning ecology, we assessed digital tools for oral communication and verified that they had a positive impact on language learning and increased learners’ opportunities for language practice. The tools not only contributed to the development of the students’ oral skills but also decreased their anxiety when speaking English