Milli mála - 2019, Page 71

Milli mála 11/2019 71
PILAR CONCHEIRO
Finally, through another videoconference in Google hangouts, the UB
students gave linguistic feedback to their partners in Iceland and dis-
cussed the cultural questions that had arisen. The themes presented
in the videos covered wide ranging topics, such as: gastronomy, tradi-
tions and the everyday life of a university student. In some cases, the
students employed their sense of humor, which brought freshness to
their proposals and showed the relaxed atmosphere generated among
the group members. It is worth nothing that students from both uni-
versities went beyond the task and continued to chat on WhatsApp
about the videos they had created, maintaining a conversation that
transcended the classroom and the strictly academic task.
4.3. Task 3. ¿Whatsapeamos?
The last task designed for the purpose of this study presents a cont-
inuity of the previous one since it shares its main goals, i.e. to explore
forms of multimodal communication and its teaching, and the same
communication channel (WhatsApp). On this occasion, the pre-ser-
vice teachers were in charge of proposing three small activities to
their Icelandic colleagues; they had to design them taking into
account the needs of HI students and the communicative potential
for teaching foreign languages through this messaging application.
UB pre-service teachers were taught by their tutors at UB what a
language needs analysis is and how relevant it is for a language
teacher. This aspect was part of their course and they had to read a
bibliography and reflect on it.
Those activities that we mentioned had to be short and engaging;
they had to incorporate the application into the students’ lives in or-
der to create and foster interaction. The pre-service teachers had to
make the most out of this application for task designing and as a
pedagogical tool. They were in charge of creating a learning space
where different affordances as text, audiovisual and kineticons (ima-
ges, animated gifs, emoticons, emojis) could allow HI students to
express themselves in the target language and improve their comm-
unicative competence. An example of a micro-activity proposed by
pre-service teachers using WhatsApp consisted of asking a simple
question like “where are you now? send me a picture.” The question