Communication through social media is a phenomenon whose relevance has involved the consideration of online discourse in the language teaching context. This article explores the functionality of Twitter (now called "X") for science dissemination within the teaching and learning of English as a foreign language. To do this, 100 tweets…

Democracy is based on individuals' ability to give their opinions freely. To do this, they must have access to a multitude of reliable information sources (Dahl, 1998), and this greatly depends on the characteristics of their media environments. Today, one of the main issues individuals face is the significant amount of disinformation circulating…

This paper takes a multimodal conversation analytic approach to explore knowledge-in-interaction in a technology-mediated online environment (Skype videoconference) during a meeting between eight university students studying to become language teachers. The analysis considers the ways in which the student-teachers demonstrate their knowledge or…

The main objective of this study is to explore how students who participate in virtual intercultural exchanges use evaluative language to build rapport and encourage collaboration. Data were gathered from 211 email messages sent by 40 Spanish and American university students and were tagged following Martin and White's Appraisal model.…

Just as research in language learning is moving beyond the four walls of the classroom, there is a growing awareness that language use (and simultaneous learning) takes place in increasingly complex and interconnected ways, in particular through the use of technology. This chapter summarizes an investigation into multimodal communicative…

This study examines the linguistic resources by which foreign language (L2) learners express their ideological positions in online discussions taking place in a telecollaborative encounter during one semester. More specifically, the study attempts to decipher how L2 learners discuss and argue their points of view regarding their first culture,…

This chapter aims to answer some of the questions that emerge when carrying out educational ethnography in a blended learning environment. The authors first outline how Virtual Ethnography (VE) has been developed and applied by other researchers. Then, to better illustrate the approach, they describe a doctoral research project that implemented…

This is an empirical study in which we explore child foreign language learners' interactional strategy use, uptake, and lexical acquisition in synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC). The study was carried out with 16 10-year-old Spanish English as a foreign language learners paired with age- and proficiency-matched English native…

This article attempts to shed some light on the possible learning benefits for language acquisition and intercultural development of authentic social interaction with expert peers through computer mediated communication (CMC) tools. The environments used in this study are video communication and the 3D virtual world "Second Life." For…

This study evaluates an international collaborative project developed and practiced on the internet, as a form of SNS, focusing on how much university students from six countries worldwide participated in the project, from the viewpoint of the participants' contribution to the forum discussion of their own group's topic on education. The 66…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…

This paper reports on an empirical and descriptive investigation into how teachers and learners use technology in three prototypical learning activities in a higher educational online learning environment. Additionally, the relationship between the educational uses of technology and the overall educational patterns of interaction between teachers…

Online collaborative writing tasks are frequently undertaken in forums and wikis. Variation between these two communication modes has yet to be examined, particularly type of feedback and its effects. We investigated the type of feedback and the impact of English native-speakers' feedback on Spanish peers' discourse restructuring in the context of…

This article analyses an experience in collaborative learning in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums on a WebCt platform of the University of Huelva's virtual campus, and was part of an innovative teaching project in 2007-08. The main objectives are to describe the processes of collaborative knowledge construction and the…

Interactive relationships in online learning communities can influence the process and quality of knowledge building. The aim of this study is to empirically investigate the relationships between network structures and social knowledge building in an asynchronous writing environment through discussion forums in a learning management system. The…