Innovation in Language Learning

This paper addresses how technology enables Beginners’ language students within higher education to develop their oral proficiency independently in the target language. As very few studies on Technology Enhanced Language Learning (TELL) focus on speaking skills, this paper fills a gap and provides an innovative approach to the specific challenges of teaching oral skills by combining these two key areas of research-based language teaching. 

The first part of the paper demonstrates these challenges within an intensive German language module (Beginners’ level to A2 within two semesters). The second part illustrates with practical examples how Voxopop (www.voxopop.com) and Cartoon Story Maker can be used as additional teaching tools to improve oral performances in a fun and interactive way, and demonstrates some examples on how to integrate it into teaching.

Voxopop is a voice based e-learning tool and Cartoon Story Maker enables students to create their own interactive cartoons by adding recorded dialogues to their pictures. The key advantages of both tools are that they facilitate opportunities for students to work independently on their oral skills and to reflect on and evaluate their own output in the target language. The option to record and edit their own material encourages students to prepare oral contributions thoroughly and to reflect on the outcome. As Merrill Swain emphasises, self-reflection can raise language awareness in terms of accuracy, word choice and pronunciation and instigate instances of ‘collaborative dialogue’ and ‘metatalk’, which are highly beneficial to the learning process. 

Moreover, these user-friendly and highly interactive tools not only supplement and support more conventional classroom practices but more importantly facilitate opportunities for further acquisition of vocabulary which is one of the biggest challenges within Beginners’ intensive programmes in higher education.