Critique: Developing Oral Skills through Skype: A Language Project Analysis

The article titled ‘Developing Oral Skills through Skype: A Language Project Analysis’ reports a research study carried out by Taillefer and Munoz-Luna in 2013. They analyzed the development of oral skills through Skype. Keeping in mind Blake’s (2008) ideas, the authors state that there are few opportunities to practice oral skills and interacting with peers from foreign countries. For instance, the researchers decided to implement socio-constructivist activities using Skype to develop oral skills.

The study follows a mixed methodology since it combines qualitative and quantitative methods. First of all, 20 Spanish and Chinese students of English were chosen to participate in the study. Subsequently, the learners were given a list of questions and topics they should follow while they were interacting through Skype. Thus, conversations had a length of 30 minutes, 15 minutes in each language. The conversations were video-recorded to evidence the process participants went through. Finally, participants were supposed to hand in a questionnaire responding to the questions asked. Taillefer and Munoz-Luna (2013) conclude that Skype is a good resource for language teaching because this supports a language objective. Moreover, Skype helps to develop communicative competence while practicing oral skills.  Despite minimal limitations like computer equipment or poor internet connection, the advantages offered by Skype are endless.

On the one hand, Taillefer’s and Munoz-Luna’s (2013) problem statement has to do with the limited opportunities that English learners have to interact with students from other countries. The previous idea is drawn taking into account Blake’s (2008) assumptions. Learners of English as a foreign language are not used to practice the target language in a real context. For instance, there is a strong possibility that non-native speakers have fears when learning L2 (Tanyeli, 2009). With this in mind, it is almost certain that students feel uncomfortable while they deal with grammar, pronunciation, false cognates and a heavy foreign accent. This is highly likely to influence learners’ performance when they accomplish a communicative task. Additionally, according to preliminary studies like Yamada’s (2008) poor collaborative-learning strategies in the classroom seem to drastically affect the development of speaking skills among students. Thus, language instructors are required to rethink traditional teaching methods. In other words, English teachers should foster communicative skills following students’ perspectives on technology. Truly, the fact of using Skype as a tool to promote speaking skills is a tremendous strategy.

Taillefer and Munoz-Luna (2013) bear in mind Miño-Garcés (2009) to claim that students are responsible for developing knowledge. This is supported by the view of an expert like Tanyeli (2009) who asserts that students must be self-motivated to overcome fears. However, McDougald's (2013) viewpoint differs from Miño-Garcés’ (2009) statements, as it is evident the presence of reduced approaches to foster autonomous learning. Given these points, the discrepancy can be probably attributed to the fact that students are required to be assisted while they are developing a communicative task. Thus, it is ambitious to think about the possibility of letting students working by themselves without any guidance. Furthermore, the number of resources used for the authors to reinforce their arguments are very narrow.