Why tweet when you can bubble? Students' perceptions of a voice microblog for the development of their L2 spoken production skills

Abstract

This study explores the role voice microblogging-based activities play in developing learners' spoken production skills. The study involved 33 low-intermediate level university students majoring in English at a private university in Japan. The voice microblogging application used in the study was Bubbly, a cross-platform social networking application that allows users to share short 90-second voice messages with fellow users. Findings, based on an exploratory factor analysis coupled with group interviews, suggest that tasks using Bubbly are beneficial for students' oral performance as they help to provide extra practice for speaking. Furthermore, results clearly show that the application's social and technological affordances help to raise students' level of motivation, engagement and confidence. It can be concluded that voice microblogging tasks along with Bubbly's various affordances offer several benefits to the blended oral communication classroom.