Description
Book SynopsisOnline collaboration can be a powerful means of encouraging language learners to make connections between their local community and people from other cultural backgrounds. In doing so, learners develop their language skills while exploring different attitudes, values and beliefs. The authors of this book draw on 20 years of participation in numerous online intercultural exchanges to offer teachers a down-to-earth guide to finding partners, choosing a platform and designing online exchanges. They share their experience of working with learners to ensure that deep intercultural learning occurs alongside language development. This book offers strategies for mediating conflict with partners and participants, and guidance on the assessment of linguistic and intercultural competences. It is a practical resource for language teachers, informed by the latest research on language teaching and intercultural telecollaborations and situated in the reality of classrooms around the world.
Trade ReviewWritten in an accessible and unpretentious style, this volume offers educators a practical, step-by-step guide to setting up and running an online intercultural exchange project with their students. The book is full of real examples and personal anecdotes from the authors' own experiences and it will go a long way to answering many of the questions that teachers have when they come to this activity for the first time. * Robert O'Dowd, University of León, Spain *
This highly practical and accessible guide provides valuable insights into task design, implementation and assessment in intercultural online exchanges while highlighting how to use emergent tensions for a better understanding of identity dynamics in intercultural dialogue. Suitable for beginners and experienced practitioners, it equips readers with strategies to establish, guide, and evaluate impactful intercultural exchanges in digital contexts. * Melinda Dooly Owenby, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introducing Online Intercultural Exchanges
Chapter 2. Finding Partners
Chapter 3. Choosing an Appropriate Platform
Chapter 4. Agreeing Goals
Chapter 5. Ethics, Netiquette and Security
Chapter 6. Initiating Online Discussions: Breaking the Ice
Chapter 7. Designing Online Intercultural Tasks
Chapter 8. Negotiating Identity and Managing Rapport
Chapter 9. The Instructor’s Roles: To Intervene or Not?
Chapter 10. Coping with Problems
Chapter 11. Organising a Videoconference
Chapter 12. Learners’ Language as Classroom Data
Chapter 13. Assessing Participants’ Performance
Chapter 14. Evaluating an Online Intercultural Exchange
Chapter 15. Developing an Action Research Project
Afterword
References
Index
