Duolingo como ferramenta tecnológica para o desenvolvimento da produção oral na língua inglesa

Abstract

The main goal of this study was to investigate the efficiency of the Duolingo application as a technological tool in the development of the oral production after a reading sentence task in English as a foreign language in the classroom. The study fulfills two objectives more specifically: to analyze the development of oral production task after the classes when the app was used and to analyze to what extent the application motivated students to develop the oral production of sentences in English after completing tasks. Participants involved in the data collection consisted of an experimental group, referred to as Group 1, with twenty 8th graders and a control group, referred to as Group 2, with thirty-two the 8th graders. All participants are in the 13 to 15 years old age range. Data collection was divided into five parts: (1) diagnostic questionnaire; (2) pre-test; (3) sequence of classes with and without the application; (4) post-test and (5) measure level of motivation. The results of this study point out that the use of Duolingo helped to improve the oral production of the proposed sentences in English. Besides, the results suggest an increase of students’ motivation in classroom.