Virtual exchange (VE) has gained prominence as a means to improve students' intercultural competence and foreign language abilities through forums and other supplemental activities. This study examines a supplemental activity referred to as the student-generated survey (SGS) implemented in the IVEProject, a large-scale VE with, at the time of this…

In order to promote Canadian students' mobility to China, it is essential to understand their motivations to study in Chinese universities because it influences their learning experiences. Through the application of the push-pull model as a conceptual framework (Altbach, 1998; Mazzarol & Soutar, 2002), this study explores the factors that…

This study examined number marking comprehension among Japanese learners of second language (L2) English, whose first language (L1) does not have an obligatory number marking system. The study conducted an online sentence comprehension experiment with 96 L1-Japanese learners and 32 native speakers of English, wherein participants engaged in a…

Research in intercultural communication studies has demonstrated that social networking (SN) can affect language minority learners' cultural adaptation/identity process. Furthermore, internet usage preferences play an important role in the cultural adaptation of mobility groups. Drawing on these two lines of development, the current paper aims to…

The focus of this study is to explore the relationship between the linguistic and cultural learning processes that four female Chinese university exchange students perceived in Japan over one academic year. Two data collection instruments were employed: participants' diary entries and follow-up interviews with the four participants during the…

With increasing global interconnectivity, effective cross-cultural interaction has become crucial for global citizens. However, learners in non-English speaking countries often lack practical English communicative skills and opportunities for authentic language practice. This study explores the effectiveness of a virtual exchange programme in…

This article presents on a multi-institution project that explains the design and development of Virtual Tabadul, an Arabic and English foreign language exchange program amongst 1,200 U.S. and Middle East and North Africa (MENA) college-aged youth. The program involves faculty, staff, and students at four institutions: Florida International…

This study explores changes in willingness to communicate in a second language (L2 WTC) inside multilingual classrooms among short-term exchange students. Data were collected from eight Chinese exchange students studying in three universities in Canada and two instructors teaching in one of these universities through in-depth interviews.…

This study reports on how the affordances of the WebEx platform were used as multimodality resources during the negotiation of meaning by participants engaged in an English/Spanish eTandem video-conferencing exchange. The exchange involved five dyads of university students with an intermediate level of language proficiency. A total of seven tasks…

Since Turkey started participating in Erasmus+ program in 2002, the interest in studying abroad has been growing in terms of popularity among Turkish students. With the aim of better preparing these students before their experience abroad, Bartin University decided to implement a language course for the outgoing students, and the researcher was…

Despite the rapid development of virtual exchange in foreign language education, its use in the field of Chinese language education is still rather nascent. Adopting a mixed-methods research approach, this study focuses on examining the pedagogical benefits of a Chinese-American virtual exchange as mediated by students' self-reported data. Two…

This study examines the influence of pre-departure proficiency on English as a second language (L2) oral development after a semester studying abroad in two distinct learning contexts. The data analysed were collected from tertiary level students (N = 33) who undertook an ERASMUS exchange semester in a European country where English was either the…

This qualitative study explores how native peers as teaching assistants can support language learning in Higher Education. The data of five semi-structured group interviews of 15 teaching assistants in total were analysed thematically. The results indicate that the assistants embraced multiple roles during the programme and within the lessons.…

Virtual exchange is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of learners in online language and intercultural interaction and collaboration with partners from other cultural contexts or geographical locations as an integrated part of course work, and under the guidance of educators and/or expert facilitators. The majority of…

In the context of learning a second language, the passing on of cultural information as a means to further the development of intercultural competences is primarily viewed as being unidirectional--the "native-speaking culture" passing on information to the language learning student. However, in EFL (English as a foreign language)…