Using WhatsApp For Teaching French As Foreign Language Research & Development Thursday, November 15th Start Time: 12:15 End Time: 12:45 Auditorio Facultad de Veterinaria Daniel Kwang Guan Chan National University of Singapore, Singapore daniel.chan@nus.edu.sg ABSTRACT Learning a foreign language in an environment where this language is not used can be a real challenge for many reasons: the limited weekly time in the classroom with a teacher, the lack of opportunities to put the learning into practice between courses, the need to wait for the next course to clear up doubts, and the difficulty of finding reliable and / or appropriate answers to their doubts online. To counter these problems, the WhatsApp messenger has been introduced as an extension of a French as a foreign language course, through which students can communicate with their teacher and with each other at any time and at any place, and thus ensure the continuity of their ubiquitous learning. This instant messenger, already well known to students who use it on a daily basis, has many potentialities that promote interaction in real time, in (and on) the foreign language. In particular, it allows the teacher to correct or comment on the written and oral productions of students, on the one hand, and students to find almost instantly the answer to their questions, on the other hand. After a presentation of the potentialities of this technology as well as some examples of interaction with this mobile application, we will analyze the students' evaluation of this communication tool - through surveys - highlighting the advantages and the limitations or disadvantages noted by students, as well as the considerations to be taken into account in the future implementations of this technological tool in the service of learning a foreign language.
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