Mobile applications dedicated to teaching and learning Spanish as a foreign language

Identifier:  TFG:1541

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TFG1541

Authors:  Durán Castro, Esther

Abstract:
Our work focuses on the analysis of mobile applications dedicated to teaching and learning Spanish as a foreign language. The growing role of new communication and information technologies in our lives has triggered the development of distance language learning trough applications that we can download from our smartphones. In this work, a collection of fourteen mobile applications for learning Spanish as a foreign language has been created with the purpose of classifying them according to their characteristics: the operating system with which they are compatible; whether the download is free or paid; the obligation to subscribe in order to obtain access to the full course; whether the application is aimed at a general audience or at young people; where it is developed only for learning Spanish or also for other languages; whether only English speakers can use the app, or if it is suitable for non-native English speakers also; and finally, the variety of Spanish dialects taught, and the corpus used for the lexicon in the applications. Having analyzed and classified the fourteen applications, the following conclusions could be reached: the operating system compatible with 93% of the applications is iOS; 86% of the applications require a subscription to gain access to the full course; 86% of the applications addressed a general audience; 50% of the applications are addressed only to learning Spanish, while the remaining 50% allows access to learning other languages; 50% of the applications are English-based, while the remaining 50% are also based on other languages; and the predominant dialects in 64% of the applications is peninsular Spanish.