Skype sessions as a way to provide additional oral practice of English university students

Abstract

english teachers frequently find students with a low level of oral proficiency but who want to put the language they are learning into practice. The lack of opportunities to use the language inside the classroom added to the lack of time and spaces to interact with others outside the classroom make the situation even more complex. This article contains the results of an Action Research study which aimed at exploring the impact of using Skype as a complementary tool to foster oral production in a group of students in a private university in Neiva, Colombia. Four students from the first level of English with a basic command of the language took part in this study. Theoretical constructs such the use of Skype in EFL, Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC), social networking, cooperative learning and oral production in CMC were taken into account. The pedagogical interventions in the study consisted of six Skype video- conferences between a teacher-researcher and the four participants. To collect data, video-conference transcripts, field notes and students’ journals were used. The data were analyzed using qualitative methods. Findings evidence that Skype impacts the EFL context in areas like language learning, social interaction and emotional influences.key words: Skype, CMC, oral production, social networking, cooperative learning.