Authentic-interactive activities to promote oral production on a virtual platform

Abstract

Implementing learning or communicative strategies are not enough to develop oral production when learning English as a Foreign language; indeed, it is necessary to provide authentic activities that engage students in the act of speaking. The objective of this research is to know if the interactive activities operated in the Moodle platform promote oral production and identify the possible association between their scores from the instructional design and their speaking level from a standardized exam. For this, a longitudinal quantitative approach was carried out during spring 2020 in the Teaching English Bachelor at BUAP, having a sample of 20 subjects. The results demonstrated that the use of authentic-interactive activities improved the students’ speaking competence significantly. Furthermore, this study pretends to contribute with useful theoretical information for teachers and students who want to select appropriate tasks to improve this competence. It is essential to clarify that this is an innovative study since it promotes the use of activities and strategies mediated by technology asynchronously and synchronously, which are flexible and suitable for students’ needs in times of contingence.