Language Teaching Research Quarterly

This work aims to find out pre-service English teachers’ perceptions on how effective and intuitive a checklist (Luque-Agulló & Almazán-Ruiz, 2023) is for assessing the usability and educational value of language learning and teaching apps (Research Question 1), and to what extent participants’ perceptions of the pedagogical value of apps have evolved after the COVID-19 lockdown (Research Question 2). To do so, the paper introduces a classroom study at the University of Jaén with two groups of pre-service teachers during two semesters in the academic years 2020/21, after the COVID lockdown, and 2022/23, when physical teaching took place. As part of a classroom project, participants had to use the checklist to evaluate apps to be potentially used in their future classroom practice and then analyse its clarity and usefulness by means of a questionnaire. Results show that pre-service teachers’ perceptions about the checklist were positive, with higher values for the 2022 group (RQ1). The comparison of both groups also reveals a shift in attitudes, as there is an increased tendency towards integration of apps in the classroom, and a higher predisposition for apps analysis (RQ2). The article ends with the conclusions, which include the pedagogical implications and limitations of the study.