Abstract Summary
We report on the use of Whatsapp, a social messaging app, as a tool to promote out-of-class learning with an intermediate EFL group, and share some of the lessons learned from the experience.
Abstract :
As the mobile phone continues its seemingly unstoppable takeover of our daily lives, and everyday communication increasingly takes the form of mobile interaction, it is becoming more important for language practitioners to consider not just whether mobile technologies can be a beneficial part of the language-learning experience, but whether they are a necessary one. The mobile phone is a valuable tool that can be exploited for language learning, but is also the theater in which much of the learners' real-life L2 communication is likely to take place.
This session reports on the use of Whatsapp, one of the world's most ubiquitous and accessible messaging services, to create formal and informal language-learning episodes. In an intermediate-level group of 16 adult learners, students were presented with a series of four communicative tasks to complete in a group message thread. These tasks, designed to mirror the structural components of the intermediate syllabus, were supplemented with informal learning episodes provoked by the posting of a humorous video, image, or article.
Learners regarded the tasks as a useful complement to traditional instruction, and placed particular value on the in-class feedback component. Learners saw the tasks as a useful, novel, and time-efficient way to consolidate target structures and recycle vocabulary. The importance of learner perspectives notwithstanding, it was the informal learning episodes that provoked a greater number of exchanges and the more meaningful interactions. The session concludes with some practical suggestions for integrating communicative Whatsapp tasks into a language-learning syllabus.
