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Telecollaboration as translingual contact zone
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Since advances in computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools have made virtual exchanges readily available in educational practices, telecollaboration has been gaining traction as a means to provide practical experiences and cultural exposure to language learners and, more recently, teacher trainees. Drawing upon Byram’s (1997) model of intercultural communicative competence (ICC), this study examines 48 teacher trainees’ interculturality through a telecollaborative project between two teacher training classes from Turkey and the USA. This study relies on data generated by the participants throughout this telecollaborative project: weekly online discussion board posts within groups of six and post-project reflections. Although developing ICC is an arduous and prolonged task, the data analysis suggested that the participants’ experiences in this telecollaboration contributed to their emergent ICC through discussions on the topics of multicultural education and interactions with trainees from another educational context. Their intercultural learning is evidenced by their (1) awareness of heterogeneity in their own and interactants’ culture, (2) nascent critical cultural awareness, and (3) curiosity and willingness to learn more about the other culture. Thus, this study implies that telecollaboration offers an effective teacher training venue that affords teacher trainees with first-hand intercultural encounters to engage with otherness and prepare for their ethnolinguistically diverse classrooms.
Virtual exchange, or telecollaboration, is a well‐known pedagogical approach in foreign language education that involves engaging classes in online intercultural collaboration projects with international partners as an integrated part of their educational programmes. This article focuses on the role of the teacher as pedagogical mentor in virtual exchange and examines the impact of the strategies and techniques that teachers use in their classes to support students’ learning during their online intercultural projects. The article begins with a proposed categorization of pedagogical mentoring reported in the literature to date. It then reports on the outcomes of a virtual exchange project carried out by three classes of initial English teacher education in Israel, Spain, and Sweden that involved two types of pedagogical mentoring. Qualitative content analysis enabled the identification of the impact of mentoring that took place before the exchange and also revealed insights into what students learned when their own online interactions were integrated into class work. The article concludes by discussing the limitations and challenges of different types of pedagogical mentoring in virtual exchange and by outlining a list of recommendations for carrying out pedagogical mentoring in such projects.
This article presents a pedagogical design for teacher education that combines flipped materials, in-class instruction, and telecollaboration (also known as virtual exchange) for foreign language teacher education. The context of this study is a course on technology and language learning for future teachers in which the flipped classroom concept was applied to technology-infused collaborative teacher training between future ESL/EFL instructors located at two partner universities (one in the USA, one in Europe). The three main teaching approaches (flipped materials, in class, and telecollaborative, or “FIT”) were symbiotic in that each structure reinforced the other through reception, discussion, and reflection as a means to help the student teachers bridge the gap between theory and practice. We apply classroom ethnographic discourse analysis to data sources (face-to-face and online discussion groups, student e-portfolios) to look at uptake of ideas, conceptual understanding, and successful transfer of new knowledge, and thereby identify whether the design provides significant learning opportunities for the future teachers. Although most studies of telecollaboration in language teacher education look principally at output, this approach allows an in-depth look at the learning process as knowledge is developed collaboratively between the participants.
The study reports on a telecollaboration exchange between two teacher education classes in the United States and Turkey. In synchronous and asynchronous conversations, preservice teachers (PTs) engaged in social justice issues and made discourse choices that captured culture(s) and communities as diverse or essentialized. These choices were affected by PTs' positionings and impacted how PTs connected to individuals only and/or to broader society. PTs asked questions that created space for critical discussions and facilitated awareness of diversity, yet sometimes led to overgeneralizations. The study has implications for designing telecollaborations that promote language and practices to unpack the issues of social justice.
This article provides an overview of the most significant emerging trends and tendencies in telecollaborative practice. In order to achieve this, I review the recent literature in the area and I identify recurring themes from the Telecollaboration in Higher Education conference which took place in Trinity College Dublin, Ireland from 21 to 23 April 2016. The main trends identified include the diversification of telecollaborative partnerships and networks, the rise of critical and cross-disciplinary approaches to telecollaboration, the combination and integration of telecollaboration with other modes of education, and, finally, the emergence of videoconferencing as an important tool for online intercultural interaction.
University of Padova Telecollaboration is an area of CALL research and practice which has developed considerably in the last twenty years. Many research studies have been carried out and important findings have been made, but there has not yet been a large scale survey to try and 'map' the state of the art in telecollaboration practice. Most studies focus on single telecollaboration projects and look at the project design, learning outcomes and difficulties teachers and researchers have encountered in that particular project. This paper reports on a survey which sought to explore current practices and attitudes towards telecollaboration across European universities and to identify barriers that practitioners encounter. The survey was completed in full by a total of 210 university language teachers in 23 different European countries and 131 students. The picture we found presents a broad spectrum of practices. Despite an overwhelmingly positive attitude towards telecollaboration, findings also provide large-scale confirmation of some of the problems identified in small-scale studies, such as organizational difficulties, lack of time, limited technical support and great uncertainty regarding issues students should address in their exchanges. The paper concludes with some recommendations as to how to meet these challenges and how telecollaboration practice could become mainstreamed in higher education. Language(s) Learned in Current Study: English
This article discusses a two-year telecollaborative project in teacher education that took an integrated approach to teaching about and through technological resources in order to introduce student-teachers to innovative methods for communicative-based language learning through computer-mediated communication (CMC). Via ‘technological immersion’, student-teachers in two groups in Spain and the US were required to work together online to give peer feedback and evaluation of several activities, including teaching sequences. They also co-created podcasts, along with accompanying educational activities. Some of the tools used were Moodle, Skype, emails, wikis, Second Life and podcasting. The article analyzes and discusses multimodal data collected during the collaboration. Results indicate that the online collaboration enhanced teacher development through opportunities unavailable in more traditional teacher education classrooms and enabled student-teachers to better make connections between theory and practice.
It is by now well established that telecollaborative exchanges frequently end in 'failed communication' and do not automatically bring about successful nego- tiation of meaning between the learners. Instead, the intended pedagogic and linguistic aims of online interaction are repeatedly missed, and projects may end in low levels of participation, indifference, tension between participants, or a negative evaluation of the partner group or their culture. The reasons offered in the literature are rather diverse in nature, and there has so far been no attempt to offer a comprehensive overview of such areas of dysfunction. Starting from a re- view of the existing body of research, this paper develops a structured inventory of factors which may lead to cases of failed communication in online exchanges. In sum, 10 different factors are suggested at four different levels: individual, classroom, socioinstitutional, and interaction. Examples of communication fail- ure taken from two exchanges will be used to illustrate how these factors are in- terconnected and influence each other. It is concluded that a more discriminating perspective of such problem areas, both among the tutors and the students, can help to further increase intercultural awareness and lead to a better understanding of the dynamic nature of online communication.
This article looks at a year-long network-based exchange between two groups of student-teachers in Spain and the USA, who were involved in various network-based collaborative activities as part of their teaching education. Their online interaction was facilitated through diverse communicative modes such as Skype, Moodle, Voicethread and Second Life (SL). It was found that the participants’ interaction with their distanced partners varied according to the available communication modes as they constructed ‘membership’ identities in the virtual interaction. The analysis hints at the need to reconsider what ‘intercultural’ means within a ‘third space’.
This article describes follow-up research aimed at exploring the long-term impact on participants of a teacher training course that integrated a variety of projects focusing on ICT use in language teaching. Internet in education is often promoted for its features that allow for new opportunities for constructivist approaches in the classroom. Nevertheless, this will not simply happen on its own. Teacher education must help shift students teachers’ pedagogical premise toward approaches that promote autonomous learning and collaborative problem-solving. Teacher training can highlight how this can be supported through ICT.
The article chronicles the first year following the closure of a teacher-training project, paying particular attention to current practices and perspectives of the primary and secondary education teachers involved. Data were gathered through questionnaires and semi-structured e-mail interviews, along with field notes and ongoing observation of participants’ current teaching environments in order to generate material for triangulation and contextual understanding of the data. The analysis of whether the project described herein has contributed to reducing the gap between the theoretical framework of teaching competences in telecollaboration and its transferral to teaching praxis is significant for future input on other training programmes.
This essay argues for a paradigm shift in what counts as learning and literacy education for youth. Two related constructs are emphasized: collective Third Space and sociocritical literacy. The construct of a collective Third Space builds on an existing body of research and can be viewed as a particular kind of zone of proximal development. The perspective taken here challenges some current definitions of the zone of proximal development. A sociocritical literacy historicizes everyday and institutional literacy practices and texts and reframes them as powerful tools oriented toward critical social thought. The theoretical constructs described in this article derive from an empirical case study of the Migrant Student Leadership Institute (MSLI) at the University of California, Los Angeles. Within the learning ecology of the MSLI, a collective Third Space is interactionally constituted, in which traditional conceptions of academic literacy and instruction for students from nondominant communities are contested and replaced with forms of literacy that privilege and are contingent upon students' sociohistorical lives, both proximally and distally. Within the MSLI, hybrid language practices; the conscious use of social theory, play, and imagination; and historicizing literacy practices link the past, the present, and an imagined future.
Computer-mediated-communication (CMC) tools allowing learners to be in contact with native speakers of their target language in other locations are becoming increasingly flexible, often combining different modes of communication in a single web- and internet-based environment. The literature on telecollaborative exchanges reveals, however, that online intercultural communication between language learners (Oexposure and awareness of difference seem to reinforce, rather than bridge, feelings of differenceDowd & Ritter, 2006). In autumn 2005, students of French at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), USA and adult learners of French at the Open University (OU), UK were joined by native French speakers studying for an MA in distance education at the Université de Franche Comté (UFC), France in a pilot Tridem project in which all participants worked on the completion of a series of collaborative tasks. The Tridem partners met over several weeks in an internet-mediated, audio-graphic conferencing environment. The project output, a shared reflection in French and English on cultural similarities and differences, took the form of several collaborative blogs. The paper draws on data from pre- and post-questionnaires, from the work published by the learners in the blogs and from post-treatment, semi-structured interviews with volunteer participants. Beyond considering some of the known factors influencing success and failure in CMC-based collaborations such as discrepancies in target language competence among learners, this article also explores affective issues and difficulties arising from varying levels of multimodal communicative competence. The insights gained are mapped against Os (2006) in telecollaboration. The result is a tentative framework which allows those involved in setting up and running telecollaborative exchanges to gauge both degree and nature of some of the risks they are likely to encounter.
Research over the past decades has demonstrated the harmful effects of native speakerism in English language teaching, including how perceptions of native speaker status are deeply intertwined with race and national identity. Recently, scholars have begun to investigate how teacher training programs might push back on native speakerism by providing classroom opportunities for students to challenge their assumptions about native speakers. This article discusses the disruptive potential of an online intercultural learning activity in which MA TESL students in Sri Lanka communicated through digital platforms with undergraduates in New York City. Drawing on data from interviews and students’ online writing, this study suggests that, as students shared videos and “linguistic landscape” images and discussed language differences, the MA TESL students confronted linguistic and racial diversity in the United States, recognizing the presence of dialects like African American Vernacular English and drawing on shared English as a second language status to gain confidence in communicating internationally. Ultimately, both groups of students began to question their beliefs about the superiority of inner circle speakers. The article concludes by discussing the benefits of the increased awareness of linguistic variation, considering how this might encourage teachers to move beyond native speaker standards in the classroom, and offering practical suggestions for implementing similar projects.
ABSTRACT In this chapter, we introduce readers to the volume, a collection of 13 inquiries that employ the methodology of self-study in teacher education practices (S-STEP) in culturally and linguistically diverse settings across the globe. After sharing the purpose and origins of the project, we provide an overview of the volume's organization and brief summaries for each study. As a whole, the collection addresses two pressing yet interrelated challenges in teacher education research: understanding teacher educator development over the career span and how these scholar-practitioners prepare teachers for an increasingly diverse, mobile, and plurilingual world.
How can we envisage a new language and culture pedagogy that breaks with the tradition of viewing language as part of a closed national universe of culture, history, people and mentality, and begins to see itself as a field operating in a complex and dynamic world characterised by transnational flows of people, commodities and ideas? Initially, to understand the field and its current challenges, we must understand its history, and the first part of this book contains a critical analysis of the history of the international field of culture teaching - the first historical treatment of this field ever written. The next part of the book focuses on how we can build a framework for a new transnational language and culture pedagogy that aims at the education of world citizens whose intercultural competence includes critical multilingual and multicultural awareness in a global perspective.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0958344017000313
In today’s globalized world, learning languages and developing intercultural skills are of paramount importance due to dynamic and complex global interdependencies. However, not every language student around the world has a chance to engage in face-to-face intercultural communication with people from different backgrounds. Telecollaboration offers a worthwhile opportunity by creating digital environments for language learners to communicate with people from diverse backgrounds. This qualitative meta-synthesis therefore aimed to investigate the research papers that were published between 2010 and 2015 in respect to language and intercultural learning within telecollaborative environments. Besides reporting emerging research trends among the studies, this synthesis study scrutinized recent emerging issues and observable patterns under five main themes: (1) the participants’ overall views on their telecollaborative experiences, (2) language learning through telecollaboration, (3) intercultural learning through telecollaboration, (4) the challenges experienced within the telecollaborative projects, and (5) the needs for further effective telecollaboration. Finally, this study synthesizes key emerging issues in telecollaborative projects and offers further research and practice directions in line with the current observable patterns.
Human language has changed in the age of globalization: no longer tied to stable and resident communities, it moves across the globe, and it changes in the process. The world has become a complex 'web' of villages, towns, neighbourhoods and settlements connected by material and symbolic ties in often unpredictable ways. This phenomenon requires us to revise our understanding of linguistic communication. In The Sociolinguistics of Globalization Jan Blommaert constructs a theory of changing language in a changing society, reconsidering locality, repertoires, competence, history and sociolinguistic inequality. • There is great interest in the issue of globalization and this book will appeal to scholars and students in linguistics, sociolinguistics, applied linguistics and anthropology • Richly illustrated with examples from around the globe • Presents a profound revision of sociolinguistic work in the area of linguistic communication
Translingual Practice: Global Englishes and Cosmopolitan Relations introduces a new way of looking at the use of English within a global context. Challenging traditional approaches in second language acquisition and English language teaching, this book incorporates recent advances in multilingual studies, sociolinguistics, and new literacy studies to articulate a new perspective on this area. Canagarajah argues that multilinguals merge their own languages and values into English, which opens up various negotiation strategies that help them decode other unique varieties of English and construct new norms. Incisive and groundbreaking, this will be essential reading for anyone interested in multilingualism, world Englishes and intercultural communication.
Based on Byram’s (1997) definition of intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and on specific types of discourse analysis proposed by Kramsch and Thorne (2002) and Ware and Kramsch (2005), this article explores how online exchanges can play a role in second language learners’ development of pragmatic competence and ICC. With data obtained from an intercultural exchange between students learning German in an American university and students studying English at a German university, we illustrate how culture is embedded in language as discourse, how “language learners have to negotiate new ways not only of interpreting the content of utterances, but also of navigating interactional pragmatics” (Ware & Kramsch, p. 201), and how advanced learners of German as a foreign language and English as a foreign language employ different discourse styles in their online postings as they seek to understand the discourse genres of their partners.
This article reports on intercultural learning by participants in an Internet chat exchange between prospective teachers studying English in Chile and graduate students from a distance learning practicum class in California. To highlight issues of identity in such exchanges, we present case studies of discussions in two online chat groups led by graduate students with contrasting linguistic and cultural backgrounds. In our discourse analysis of the chat transcripts from these two groups, we found differences in how participants oriented to local, national, and global contexts, with one group primarily discussing political and educational issues from a global perspective, while the second group responded to the same issues by giving local examples. We conclude by discussing pedagogical implications for future Internet exchanges that aim to foster intercultural learning within a transnational paradigm of foreign language education.
This article presents case studies of two long-time English language teachers: a California English as a second language instructor originally from Brazil, and a Chilean English as a foreign language teacher who worked for many years in the United States before returning home. Based on interview and classroom observation data, this research explores teachers' perspectives on the connections between their transnational life experiences and their development of intercultural competence, how they define their own (inter)cultural identities; and how they approach cultural issues with their English language learners. Although both women self-identify as bicultural, they were observed to have somewhat different approaches to teaching cultural issues: The California teacher emphasizes subjective comparisons between the many national cultures represented in her classroom, but the teacher in Chile focuses more on the cultural changes that she and her students have experienced as a result of globalization. Whereas previous studies of teacher identity in TESOL have focused primarily on the dichotomy between native- and nonnative-English-speaking teachers, this article argues that the profession needs to put more value on the pedagogical resources that transnational and intercultural teachers bring to English language teaching. I end with implications for educating intercultural teachers.
This paper reports on research carried out on an intercultural telecollaborative exchange between language
learners in Germany and Ireland and focuses particularly on what was required of the teachers in the development of the project.
The review of the literature looks at the role of telecollaboration within the field of network-based language learning and also
offers an overview of the different types of interaction which have been identified on on-line message boards. Following that, the
different tasks of the teachers in the German-Irish exchange are explored. These
include developing learners’ understanding of intercultural learning, improving learners’ ability to make effective
contributions to the on-line interaction, increasing their awareness of the difference between on-line monologues and dialogues and
finally, establishing a good working relationship with the partner teacher. Based on these findings, recommendations are outlined on
how to prepare teachers for telecollaborative projects.
This volume provides an introduction to online intercultural exchange, the activity of engaging language learners in collaborative project work with partners from other cultures through the use of online communication technology. The chapters look at how online collaboration can be successfully integrated into the foreign language classroom and how it can contribute to the development of students intercultural communicative competence.
Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected
- S Canagarajah
Canagarajah, S. (2018). Transnationalism and translingualism: How they are connected. In
X. You (Ed.), Transnational writing education: Theory, history, and practice (pp. 57-76).
New York, NY: Routledge.
Cultural globalization and language education
- B Kumaravadivelu
Kumaravadivelu, B. (2008). Cultural globalization and language education. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Online intercultural exchange: Policy, pedagogy, practice
- R O'dowd
O'Dowd, R., & Lewis, T. (Eds.) (2016). Online intercultural exchange: Policy, pedagogy,
practice. New York, NY: Routledge.
English as a lingua franca in international business
- M.-L Pitzl
Pitzl, M.-L. (2010). English as a lingua franca in international business. Saarbrucken:
VDM-Verlag.