This project offered students in Spanish language courses at Utrecht University (UU) the opportunity to interact with expert peers through virtual exchanges. By means of the virtual exchanges, the students could interact with native speakers in a meaningful way, which has potential benefits their motivation, communicative competence and intercultural awareness. 

Background information

The opportunities for meaningful interaction and the development of intercultural competence are limited in the Spanish language courses at UU. Learning to interact in a foreign language does not only require knowing the right words and grammar, but also requires being able to communicate well by following the customs and values of a culture. Integrating education in digital environments to enable authentic communication with peers is beneficial for the learning of students, as this positively affects their motivation and the development of communicative competence and intercultural awareness. Connecting students to native speakers gives them access to an authentic communication context in which learning can take place. 

Project description

Students from two Spanish language courses at UU performed oral tasks with the help of virtual exchanges. In the virtual exchange, students from UU and native speaking pre-service language teachers from other universities carried out five language tasks collaboratively. The tasks include cultural topics and require the negotiation of meaning between participants. After the course, a survey was distributed to all students in the courses to evaluate experiences related to the real-life communication setting and motivation. The survey included questions about the virtual environment, the tasks, the learning potential of the exchange and intercultural awareness perceptions.

Aims

This project aims to answer the following research questions

• Did the interaction sessions help students to improve their communicative competence?
• Do the opportunities created by the virtual exchange to engage in social interaction with native speakers contribute to an increase in students’ intercultural awareness?
• What are the students’ experiences related to the real life communication setting and motivation?

References

• Byram, M. (2019). Intercultural language teaching in an era of internationalization. In P. Romanowski & E. Bandura  (Eds.), Intercultural Foreign Language Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Contexts (pp. 99-120). IGI Global. 
• Ellis, N. C., O’Donnell, M. B., & Romer, U. (2015). Usage-based language learning. In B. MacWhinney & O. William (Eds.), The handbook of language emergence (pp. 163–180). Malden, MA: Wiley– Blackwell.
• Hampel, R., & Pleines, C. (2013). Fostering student interaction and engagement in a virtual learning environment: An investigation into activity design and implementation. The CALICO Journal, 30(3), 342–370.
• Lantolf, J., Poehner, M., & Thorne, S. L. (2020). Sociocultural theory and L2 development. In B. VanPatten, G. Keating, & S. Wulff (Eds.), Theories in second language acquisition (pp. 223-247). 3rd Edition. New York: Routledge.
• O’Dowd, R., & O’Rourke, B. (2019). New developments in virtual exchange for foreign language education. Language Learning & Technology, 23(3), 1 – 7. 

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