Foreign Language Communication in Virtual Exchanges: Reflections and Implications for Applied Linguistics

Introduction

O'Dowd (2018) describes telecollaboration as the engagement of a group of learners in online intercultural interactions and collaborative projects with partners from other cultural contexts or geographic locations as an integral part of educational programs. He explains that this activity has been given different names (such as online intercultural exchange, virtual exchange, COIL, Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education, globally networked learning environments, e-tandem and teletandem), and defends the use of the expression virtual exchange (VE) as an umbrella term to constitute and reinforce an academic field of practice and raise awareness of educational decision makers of the educational value of this kind of activity.

VE has been widely used by Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to foster internationalization at home (IaH), that is, “…the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (Beelen & Jones, 2015, p. 69). Helm and Beaven (2020) point to the recent growing interest in VE by HEIs due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the reduction in physical mobility, arguing that it can represent more accessible and equitable meaningful international and intercultural experiences for students and staff. They present a series of case studies that illustrate VE projects developed and implemented in a range of different settings (most in the context of the Erasmus+VE project, which ran from 2018 to 2020, enabling youth in Europe and the Southern Mediterranean to engage in intercultural experiences online as part of their formal or non-formal education), focusing on intercultural dialogue, critical thinking and media literacy, soft skills development, and VE as a complement to physical mobility.

O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) identified four levels of factors that can contribute to communication failure in telecollaborative projects: individual, classroom, socio-institutional and interactional. The individual level concerns learners’ motivations, expectations, and level of intercultural communicative competence (ICC). The classroom level comprises teacher-to-teacher relationship, task design, learner matching procedures, local group dynamics and pre-exchange briefing. The socio-institutional level includes technological tools available and access to them, organization and design of the course of study as well as prestige of target language and culture. The interactional level targets cultural differences in communication styles and behaviors, and possible divergent communicative expectations that can lead to communication breakdown.

Communication plays an important role in the development of VE, especially as interaction and collaborative online work in tasks usually involve the use of a foreign language. This article presents the results of a study that analyzed the strategies used by tutors who are not experts in language and linguistics to facilitate communication in a foreign language in virtual exchanges within the BRaVE (Brazilian Virtual Exchange) programme. Our research question was: What are the strategies reported by non-language expert tutors in virtual exchange activities that involve communication in a foreign language?

This article will start by describing the large scale BRaVE programme and its development at Universidade Estadual Paulista “Júlio de Mesquita Filho” (UNESP) through examples of activities developed in different courses. The research methodology used in the study will be illustrated, then the findings will be discussed under categories raised in the data concerning strategies used by the tutors. Finally, the author will reflect on the implications of the results for applied linguistics and the need for a theoretical framework to support the planning of specific foreign language communication strategies in VE activities.