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Across the globe, the emergence of COVID-19 led to widespread, sudden suspension of in-person instruction, displacing more than 1.5 billion learners (Capilla et al., 2020). Addressing the gap in research on emergency remote teaching (ERT), this empirical study draws on insights from semi-structured interviews with 10 in-service and five pre-service teachers, who navigated the transition both as K-12 teachers and graduate students, participating in weekly mentoring for English language learners, online curricular modules, face-to-face discussions (until the transition to ERT), mixed-reality simulation teaching with coaching, and written reflections. Using a sensemaking theoretical framework, our study examines the following questions: (1) What were the main challenges and opportunities of ERT as experienced by this cohort of language teachers? (2) How did the dual role of being a K-12 teacher and graduate student provide a unique lens for navigating these challenges and opportunities? (3) What tools or supports helped these language teachers through the transition to ERT? Thematic analysis revealed three themes (emotion, shared meaning, and technology) and illuminated connection as an overarching theme. Findings suggest that the experience of navigating the transition from both positions led to greater empathy, increased facility using technology, and a growing support network of fellow teacher-learners.

This study builds on research examining the in-school technology practices of adolescent language learners by exploring the patterns of classroom literacy practices that emerge when a telecollaborative project is introduced into a conventional secondary language classroom. We draw on the conceptual frameworks and discourse analytical tools developed by researchers of online communication practices at the post-secondary level and turn this lens to examine how an international online exchange project might contribute to the creation of an in-school learning environment in which adolescents use technology to interact with distally located peers through telecollaboration. The particular contribution of this study is twofold: to offer insight into patterns that characterize the literacy practices that emerge through the introduction of telecollaboration into the learning environment and to document the types of pedagogical decision-making that such projects introduce into the secondary context. Using a case-study design, we explored two central areas: (1) What patterns of interaction emerge in the literacy practices of adolescent students as they build relationships with their intercultural partners? (2) How do teachers address the pedagogical issues that are foregrounded when introducing innovative literacy practices such as telecollaboration into the secondary learning environment? Our premise is that online exchanges might offer a different kind of learning experience that provides opportunities for adolescents to engage with language in ways that do not typically get enacted in conventional language classrooms. Our interest therefore is grounded both in providing a rich, descriptive inventory of how adolescents engage with telecollaboration in the classroom context, as well as in documenting the types of pedagogical issues that are introduced. We offer a linguistically grounded portrait of what constitutes the interactional patterns and pedagogical issues in a classroom learning environment shaped by the introduction of an online intercultural project. Using a case-study approach, therefore, we provide close documentation and analyses of a 15-week, classroom-based telecollaboration project through student transcripts and focal teacher interviews. We conclude with a discussion of the empirical and pedagogical implications associated with integrating telecollaboration into secondary language classroom contexts.

This paper explores the pedagogical and conceptual issues that accompany the integration of intercultural communication skills into the secondary curriculum by analyzing the interactions of 102 adolescents in Spain and the USA during a 15-week, classroom-based, international online exchange. Focusing on the skills of discovery and interaction within a model of intercultural communicative competence, I examined the ways in which adolescent students displayed these skills through their online comments as well as the extent to which participants themselves perceived that their partnerships were successful. The findings from this study demonstrate that the adolescents displayed a range of interactional features that have been previously documented as interculturally strategic in research with post-secondary students engaged in similar online exchange projects. Such skills form part of a larger construct of intercultural communicative competence that, in turn, folds into the types of new literacy skills needed to write, read, communicate, produce, consume, and critique in a digital age. This kind of critical engagement with literacy fosters contexts in which students can grapple with authentic intercultural interactions and better understand how the words and symbols they send and receive position them as their own representatives and as representatives of their immediate communities and larger cultural groups.

A distinction must be made between "computer-generated scoring" and "computer-generated feedback". Computer-generated scoring refers to the provision of automated scores derived from mathematical models built on organizational, syntactic, and mechanical aspects of writing. In contrast, computer-generated feedback, the focus of this article, refers to a focus on computer tools for writing assistance rather than for writing assessment and has piqued the curiosity of many in the writing community. In this article, the author discusses why computer-generated feedback is piquing curiosity. The author also discusses how computer-generated feedback helps students improve their writing and how it should be integrated into writing instructions.

The authors describe a one-on-one online mentoring project that matched preservice teachers with English language learners to help them improve their writing skills. Online writing became a practical, engaging forum for the preservice teachers to discuss language learning and teaching and to learn how to effectively teach writing to ELL students. (Contains 1 figure.)

We performed a two-phase, year-long research project that explored the impact of peer feedback on language development. We investigated specifically how and when post-secondary learners of English and Spanish provide corrective feedback on their partners' use of the target language in weekly asynchronous discussions by assigning them to one of two conditions: e-tutoring, in which students were asked to provide peer feedback on any linguistic form they perceived as incorrect; and e-partnering, in which students were not required to provide peer feedback but could do so on their own initiative. We examined the frequency and type of language use by coding the feedback for language-related episodes (Swain & Lapkin, 1998) and for feedback strategies (Ros i Sole & Truman, 2005). The findings indicate that students in both conditions preferred an inclusion of feedback on form as part of their exchange, but such feedback only occurred when explicitly required in the e-tutoring condition. Pedagogical implications include the need to situate peer feedback on form within current models of telecollaboration and to assist students in using feedback strategies such as reformulations, which do not rely on a deep understanding of the target or native language grammar. (Contains 8 tables and 1 note.)

This paper presents two nine-year-old children who used different oral, written, visual, and digital modes as resources to create meaning and to position themselves socially through multimodal stories. Their diverging experiences with technology as a resource for storytelling draw attention to the importance of studying "the ways that old and new ideas [about literacy] merge and clash across contexts". Furthermore, their experiences help researchers and teachers understand the social purposes and dynamics of storytelling in a technology-rich classroom. (Contains 2 figures.)

With the advent of English as a global language, the ability to write well in English across diverse settings and for different audiences has become an imperative in second language education programmes throughout the world. Yet the teaching of second language writing is often hindered by the great amount of time and skill needed to evaluate repeated drafts of student writing. Online "Automated Writing Evaluation" programmes have been developed as a way to meet this challenge, and the scoring engines driving such programmes have been analysed in a considerable array of psychometric studies. However, relatively little research has been conducted on how AWE is used in the classroom and the results achieved with such use. In this article, we analyse recent developments in automated writing evaluation, explain the bases on which AWE systems operate, synthesize research with these systems, and propose a multifaceted process/product research programme on the instructional use of AWE. We explore this emerging area of inquiry by proposing a range of potential questions, methodologies and analytical tools that can define such a research agenda. (Contains 2 tables and 3 notes.)

This qualitative study explores the factors that contributed to limited interactional involvement in a telecollaborative project linking two groups of participants: 12 advanced-level students of English in northeastern Germany and 9 advanced-level students of German in the southwestern United States. Drawing on data from online transcripts, interviews, and questionnaires, I examine the tensions that arise when students' attempts at communicating online result in missed opportunities for engaging with their online partners. I report on the results of a discourse analysis of the online transcripts and rely on extensive interview and survey data to examine which factors made it difficult for students to maintain sustained interpersonal involvement in the online discourse. I document three main contextual tensions that arose from the different socially and culturally situated attitudes, beliefs, and expectations that informed students' communicative choices in the online discourse. I address the pedagogical implications of each of these three tensions. The findings suggest that research needs to focus not only on how students jointly construct online discourse, but how they co-construe the context for their participation. The paper concludes by addressing the implications of these findings for future research promoting language and culture learning online. (Contains 3 tables and 9 notes.)

US youths' lives are increasingly divided between the academic requirements of school and immersion in new media and culture outside school. Educators can help bridge in-school and out-of-school literacy practices by encouraging students to engage with hybrid texts that draw on multiple modes of representation. In this paper, we analyze the "disconnect" between academic literacy and new media, discuss the concept of hybridity as a way to bridge it, and provide a linguistically grounded analysis of students' hybrids texts and practices in two technology-intensive learning environments: a digital storytelling project in an after-school university-community collaborative and a one-to-one laptop program in an urban school district.

This article discusses how three layers of mediated mentoring were integrated into community-based learning to support novice TESOL teachers’ learning: (a) conceptual mentoring to support teachers’ understanding as they learnt to make sense of the rationale behind specific pedagogical approaches, (b) sociocultural mentoring that contextualised teachers’ learning within English learners’ linguistic, cultural, social, and local community contexts, and (c) instructional decision-making mentoring that captured teachers’ actual teaching practices via the formats of engaging them in immediate post-tutoring reflections with peers and providing instructor’s feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagine teaching English to classes of 70 to 80 students at a time, with six or seven different classes each day. Imagine teaching in tiny classrooms where students sit in [...]