ICT as the springboard for the creation of more opportunities within the zone of proximal development in the pronunciation class.

Mar del Plata

Congreso; I Jornadas Nacionales del Profesorado de Inglés; 2016

Facultad de Humanidades / UNMdP

One of the main concerns explored in contemporary research in education has been the ultimatepurpose of learning development: whether teachers should aim at transmitting mostly content,or rather at fostering the development of certain abilities or skills. In the case of languageacquisition, the debate started in the 1970s, with authors proposing new theories in response totraditional ways of teaching, such as the theory of the ?Zone of Proximal Development?, ZPD(Vygostky, 1978; Wells, 1999). Over the years, these studies led to new student-need-centredmethodologies, as opposed to the conventional syllabus-completion focus (Gardner, 1985;Richards & Rodgers, 1986). In so doing, issues such as motivation, autonomy and scaffoldingthrough peer support have gained ground in societies where new technologies, mostly ICT,play a most important role in education, and where the need to adapt to these changes andadvances becomes essential (Rogers, 1969). In this context, educators need to be conscious ofthe fact that these new technologies can enhance teaching and learning, and that they fostermotivation greatly (Sharma & Barret, 2007; Willis, 1998).This presentation will be aimed atshedding light on improvements on some teaching methods and techniques as an attempt toaddress the needs of constant technological evolution in society. We will focus on thedescription and analysis of some technology-mediated collaborative tasks designed to motivateand help students improve their pronunciation skills in the context of Vygotsky?s ZPD theory,and mostly employed on Social Networks or students? Personal Learning Environments(PLEs). The analysis will be carried out from our perspective as members of the chair ofPráctica de la Pronunciación at Facultad de Lenguas, Universidad de Córdoba.