How to improve academic speaking skills in a language MOOC: from needs analysis to course design

In recent years, the number of educational resources freely available online for learning foreign languages has grown exponentially. LMOOCs, defined as “dedicated web-based online courses for second languages with unrestricted access and potentially unlimited participation” (Bàrcena et al. 2014: 1) are an emerging category in this field. One of the main challenges faced by LMOOCs is that learning a language is fundamentally skill-based and practicing skills requires interaction with others. Therefore, LMOOCs should provide an adequate learning environment including activities and tools which stimulate social learning (Motzo, Proudfoot 2017: 88). In the framework of the LMOOC4Slav project, funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the EU during 2021-2024, several freely available online learning tools will be produced for Slavic-speaking larners who intend to undertake part of their studies in Romance-speaking countries. One of the main results will be an Academic Italian language MOOC. To develop the learning path, the first activity was to analyze the needs of the target learners to make decisions on the goals and contents of the MOOC. A questionnaire was developed and administered to a total of 209 adult language learners in Italy (L2) and various Slavic-speaking countries (FL). Overall findings of the needs analysis revealed that a majority of the FL/L2 respondents considered as one of the main difficulties those activities which require oral skills, such as performing or understanding an oral presentation, taking an oral exam or participating in a formal discussion. The aim of this study is to investigate whether language MOOCs are a viable option to elicit oral production and to improve pronunciation and perception of language learners through the analysis of previous experiences (e.g. Rubio 2014; Estebas-Vilaplana, Solans 2020), to evaluate the potential or the limitations of LMOOCs and to propose, based on these premises, examples of online content allowing to practice aspects of speaking skills with tasks that reflect everyday situations and interactive contexts in an academic setting.