Actions and reflections on the use of a WhatsApp group for foreign language learning

Abstract

The potential of mobile technology is being increasingly investigated. The advantages of these technologies go beyond the low-cost, high connectivity and portability. These are devices that can be accessed and used by students anywhere at any time, regardless of permissions teachers and educational institutions. Given this new situation, the purpose of this work is to report on an E-Mentoring Project which had the support of the WhatsApp application. By forming a group, students of Portuguese and German could practice language skills acquired in the classroom, interact about their daily lives in a foreign language and send messages and images files. In addition, students could count on the support of a virtual tutor and a teacher to be able to express in the target language, ask questions of grammar and vocabulary and still receive corrective feedback when requested.