Oral production skills and pronunciation improvement in MOOCs for migrants and refugees: an unavoidable challenge

Abstract

This article is focused on the challenges posed by the development of oral production skills (speaking, pronunciation) in a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC), a resource that is totally conditioned by the technologies and has very limited posibilities for individual adaptation. First of all, the difficulties that this goal poses are reviewed and confronted with some successful precedents that show how to deal with those challenges. Next, we present a case study in which some strategies and resources have been used to develop oral skills and improve pronunciation in technologically mediated environments, an Spanish L-MOOC for migrants and refugees, absolute beginners, developed at UNED (Spain).