Autonomous learning through the use of mobile applications : Duolingo, Babbel and Busuu

Abstract

The evolution of society produced by technologic advances has led to a world continuously connected to the Internet. Technologic devices and the Internet allow their users to obtain access to a huge amount of information and to applications designed to facilitate their daily activities. The presence and growing importance of new technologies in almost all fields of humans’ lives opened a door towards a new path in pedagogic environments. As a result, ICTs are developed to be employed either in classrooms as completing instruments which, together with traditional materials, facilitate the process of teaching and learning, or as individual language courses which users administrate independently and individually. Bearing this in mind, it is necessary to mention that there has been a massive development of applications and programmes used to learn languages, more specifically, English. These applications present their users interactive and innovative linguistic materials related to specific topics and organised in units, creating a complete language course and including from the most elementary to the most advanced contents. The use of these language applications provide students with opportunities to learn English using their mobile devices, indistinctively of the place and time. Moreover, the interface, organisation of content and versatility of these programmes let users manage their learning process, obtain a record of their progress and acquire the English language autonomously.