Abstract:

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the experience of using a video chat platform, Conversifi, in two English courses in the 2nd and 4th years of the degree of Primary Education at the University of León (Spain) during the fall term in 2022. This degree is a four-year teaching training program with two first general years and two other years of specialization - one of the specializations offered is English Language Teaching. Therefore, the two experiences described here have in common the use of the same tool, Conversifi, and the achievement of the same broad objectives: fostering students’ competencies, boosting motivation, and enabling them to have opportunities to improve their speaking and listening skills and their communicative abilities in their foreign language. However, there are also differences between the two case studies, as one of them (the group of sophomores) involves a larger number of students and many of them will not specialize in ELT, whereas the other (the group of seniors) comprises only students specializing in ELT: in both groups, most of the students are Spanish speakers, except for few exchange students from other countries. They are all training to be teachers of young learners, but only those in the second group will be teachers of English. Both groups were asked to carry out some activities using this tool for synchronous communication with English-speaking university students from around the world. It is also important to note that the seniors have had this experience twice, when they were sophomores, in their 2nd year, and then again in their 4th year, under different circumstances.

The sophomores were asked to first carry out a conversation as coaches in Spanish to get used to the platform and also to experience it from the teacher’s side. After that, they had to carry out 6 conversations as learners in English, following the modules established by the teacher so that they had some guidance. Finally, they had to submit the recording of one of the conversations and the written summary of three of them, where they reflected on the most difficult parts of each of those linguistic exchanges. The seniors were asked to engage in 4 conversations ‘freestyle’ as learners (in English) and then submit the recording of one of them and a critical linguistic analysis of their performance in that video. Ultimately, both groups had to complete a final survey, which has a two-fold purpose: for the students to reflect on their learning process and learning outcomes through this experience of web videoconferencing and for the professors to obtain feedback about the level of satisfaction of the students with the task and their learning awareness. The students’ work has been evaluated with checklists (completion of all the steps) and rubrics (to assess the oral and written assignments).

Both the assignments and the results of the surveys have given us valuable information about the usefulness of Conversifi and insight into ways of improving the activities based on this web technology so that our students can benefit as much as possible from computer-supported collaborative work that favors internationalization at home.

Keywords:

Video chat platform, internationalization at home, teacher training, ELT.