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…

Language educators' goals include promoting cultural understanding and improving the language skills of their students. Virtual Exchange (VE) is a powerful means to do this. Students in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classrooms often have few opportunities to communicate with other users of English. VE gives them virtual mobility, enabling…

This case study describes two iterations of a cross-disciplinary Virtual Exchange (VE) project developed between the Universities of Bordeaux (France) and León (Spain), involving students of Applied Physics and Measurement Engineering (APME), and Electrical Engineering. The students worked together on designing a real garden in Bordeaux within…

The complex relationship between language and culture has been widely problematised in applied linguistics and education (see Byram, 1997; Byrnes, 2002; Kramsch, 1993; Risager, 2006). While this issue has been extensively explored from a theoretical perspective, few studies have examined the complexity of this relationship from the…

The School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies at the University of Nottingham hosted the fifth annual conference in the "Innovative Language Teaching at University" series. Under the heading "Enhancing participation and collaboration" the conference, organised by Cecilia Goria, Oranna Speicher and Sascha Stollhans, took…