An approach to designing an online teaching proposal to improve new vocabulary assimilation and integration in English during the Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

As a consequence of English being the lingua franca that allows cross-cultural communication, learning this language has become essential. For this reason, guaranteeing effective learning and teaching processes is of utmost importance. In these conditions, Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are argued to positively influence the aforementioned processes. Indeed, they stimulate students’ motivation, improve academic achievement as well as permit the modality of e-learning to be developed. Furthermore, in the specific context of the Covid-19 pandemic, the use of ICTs is paramount. In a situation in which face-to-face education is forced to stop for health reasons, ICTs provide an alternative to continue with educational practices online. In the particular case of a 2nd ESO classroom, there is a linguistic problem that needs to be improved during the Covid-19 situation. These students have difficulty with new vocabulary assimilation and integration in the language skills of listening, reading and writing. That is to say, they were unable to acquire and incorporate new words or expressions in their repertoire to both understand input and produce output. As a way to give a possible solution for this problem in the special conditions caused by the Covid-19 disease, this contribution is created with a double purpose. On the one side, this thesis aims at providing a practicable teaching proposal that can be completely implemented online throughout the major use of a World Wide Web (WWW), also known as a website. The website exclusively created for the purpose of this paper is called ‘Your English corner’. This website also includes certain online games that stimulate students’ motivation. On the other side, the second goal of this thesis is presenting a teaching proposal whose four activities are expected to improve the preceding students’ linguistic problem. The activities that constitute the teaching proposal are included on the website. In such a way, the lesson plan presented in this paper may be considered a feasible option to help students with new vocabulary assimilation and integration in an online manner. Nonetheless, the teaching proposal has not been empirically implemented, which encourages further action to actually put the lessons presented in this thesis into practice.