English through the use of smartphone apps as motivation for students from the School of Tourism and Gastronomy

Résumé

With students spending up to 20% of their in-class time texting, emailing, and checking social media, it is no wonder the problem about smartphones in the classroom arises. This article presents results of a piece of research focused on the analysis and reflection of the smartphone applications used with higher education students in order to provide, as well as to improve, their results in departmental exams while they are studying English at a professional level.

The study took place over one semester of a curricular English course where smartphone applications were carefully selected and integrated into the current didactic units of the standardized institutional English program, with the purpose of finding, in the school of tourism and gastronomy, not only a solution, but a different approach to turning the problem into part of an updated methodology for the foreign language classroom. 

The results of this research are expected to have a significant impact on the improvement of the methodology used by teachers at all the schools on our institutional English program with the effect that, once the teachers begin to implement the systematic use of  smart phone applications in the delivery of their lessons, learners will hopefully perceive the English course as more relevant and  meaningful and be motivated to achieve the expected results.