Search

Virtual Exchange (VE) in second language education refers to a technology-enabled, interactive, intercultural experience that is designed to increase learners' intercultural communicative competence and performance. In this paper the findings of a bilingual (English/Turkish), synchronous video communication project among 31 US and Turkish college students are presented. Thematic analysis was used in this study. The results show that the VE -- to a certain extent and similarly to other research studies -- achieves the learning objectives of not only increased cultural awareness and communicative competence about the target culture and language itself but also the growth of factual knowledge about diverse topics that the students are interested in learning. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]

There is no doubt that telecollaboration currently plays an important role in foreign language learning and, not less so, in the field of English for Specific Purposes (ESP). Guth (2020) highlighted how telecollaboration has rapidly evolved in the past years as an innovative approach, and how it has brought together a whole community of academics and researchers interested in the field. In this paper, a brief overview of the various presentations that took place in the EuroCALL Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) Special Interest Group (SIG) Symposium is offered. The paper introduces four projects based on telecollaboration contextualised within an ESP classroom in higher education. The first one focuses on a collaborative debate project using English as a lingua franca; the second elaborates on improving learners' pragmatic skills through telecollaborative roleplays; the third describes an immersive Virtual Exchange (VE) aiming to foster the students' civic and entrepreneurial competence, while enhancing their intercultural communicative competence. The fourth project aimed at improving students' business communication and management skills in English in a multicultural environment. [For the complete volume, "Intelligent CALL, Granular Systems and Learner Data: Short Papers from EUROCALL 2022 (30th, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 17-19, 2022)," see ED624779.]