Technology and social impact in teaching Spanish

Abstract

The presence of 1256 language learning startups on Crunchbase and the existence of an application with more than 300 million users are a solid indicator of both an interest in language in the society and a desire to make this sociocognitive appetite profitable. However, few of these products meet the social needs of language learners (Heil, Wu, Lee and Schmidt, 2016; Dubreil & Thorne, 2017; Sawin & Guillén, 2017; Sykes, 2018). This article explores the discourse, learning experience, and social impact of three popular platforms for learning Spanish, in the context of what seems to be a bonanza for language learning and technology products.