Oral activities and language use with the help of digital tools

A field report from foreign language teaching

Abstract

In this article, we present the results of a project hosted at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway (2019-2021) whose aim was to explore ways to make students of foreign language practice their oral abilities in a digital context. We present the motivation and need for a focus on these abilities, and then present examples of the types of activities that we tried, both such activities that can be used both in a face-to-face setting and in a digital setting, and such activities that are maybe more specifically aimed to full-digital courses. Finally, we present four aspects that are perhaps more challenging when one uses digital tools for oral practice, specifically the spontaneity of the students’ speech production, the use of the mother tongue when the students are not being supervised by the teacher and the reluctance to speak up in the digital plenary.