Page 61 - Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

45 Apuntes de Investigación en la Enseñanza de Idiomas

Building up the Speaking Skill Aided by the Community of

Inquiry Framework

Darlene González Miy

Luz Edith Herrera Díaz

Universidad Veracruzana

Key words: information and communication technologies (ICT), learning community, online educa-
tion, teaching English as a foreign language (TEFL).

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) have demonstrated their usability for language
learning so far. However, these tools often focus on reinforcing the receptive over the productive
skills, and online courses have been negatively criticized due to the limited opportunities to integrate
speaking activities. Therefore, distance language learning should be directed to take advantage of
the tools available nowadays to create communication connections among the students, as to im-
prove not only oral production but interaction with other people (Jordano de la Torre, 2011).

On this basis, the objective of this research was to analyze the development of the speaking skill in
an online English course with the aid of the Community of Inquiry framework (CoI) as the underlying
pedagogy for learning in technology-mediated environments. How does the Community of Inquiry
framework contribute to developing the speaking skill in an online English course? was the research
question proposed for the objective formerly mentioned; while uncovering the relations between the
indicators of the speaking skill and the core elements of the CoI framework was the strategy adopted
to explain the answer to such question.

Literature review

The Community of Inquiry framework
Developed by Garrison, Anderson and Archer (2000), the Community of Inquiry framework consists
in a pedagogical model that aims to develop a virtual community in which its members get involved
in meaningful learning experiences from three core components: teaching presence defined as “the
design, facilitation, and direction of the social and cognitive processes with the purpose to achieve
personal, meaningful, and educational outcomes” (p.89); cognitive presence understood as “the ex-
tent to which participants construct and confirm meaning through sustained reflection and discourse
in a community of inquiry” (p.89); and social presence explained as “the ability of the participants
in a community to project themselves socially and emotionally as real people” (p.89). Since online
learning requests students and instructors to adopt specific roles towards a learning goal, the CoI
framework seems to be a practical choice to guide the learning process towards the development of
the speaking skill.