VISP DESIGN AND EVALUATION, A MOBILE APPLICATION TO PRACTISE ORAL COMPETENCE

Abstract

In this paper a new mobile application (app), called VISP (Videos for Speaking), is introduced. This app is easily accessible and manageable and it is aimed at helping students of English as a foreign language to improve their idiomaticity (lexicon, phraseological competence, syntax) in their oral production. In order to do so, the user is invited to make the audio description (AD) of a clip, as part of an authentic communicative task framed within the task-based learning method. After a brief overview of what has been done in the field of mobile assisted language learning (MALL) and a description of the basic principles of AD, this paper gives an account of the process followed to create and launch VISP until arriving to the conception of its second version, VISP 2.0. This was accomplished by means of carrying out several empirical tests to evaluate the app and the learning outcomes that it contributes to achieve. The data obtained up until now allow for the proposal of a theoretical-pedagogical framework that can be applied to a MALL app that is to be used in the context of distance education, thanks to the assessment of the methodological steps that have been taken on the making process of VISP 2.0.