The potential of web 2.0 for the creative and efficient teaching of a language in a university context: encouraging positive feelings and motivating students inside and outside of the classroom

Web 2.0 and the foreign language: how to develop creative teaching routes through the Internet and the digital world. The presentation will offer a series of ideas on how to benefit from new technologies in language learning (such as social networks, new tablet apps). A variety of activities and practical projects will be presented, some of them suitable for the class and for the language labs, some others more appropriate for specific independent study of the language in e-learning. In a university context, the language learning conveyed in a class usually develops itself in a few contact hours of formal teaching with the students. It is important to give our learners the opportunity to explore the language and also familiarize themselves with it through informal e-learning that takes advantage of a private and social internet space; the web changes perspectives and allows for the creation of a virtual environment, which is equally important and significant for language learning at home: the “community class” and distance learning. Attention will be drawn to the multimedia dimension in particular, and the effectiveness of some apps such as voice thread, tour builder, quizlet, to mention a few, as valuable tools for reinforcing learning experiences inside and outside of the classroom that strategically engage students with oriented tasks aimed at the pedagogical implication of “doing with the language.”