Virtual exchange (VE) is an ideal venue for digital literacy skills development (Fuchs, Hauck & Müller-Hartmann, 2012) and for critical digital literacy (CDL) (Hauck, 2019). Yet literacy is a fluid, deictic term, the meaning of which is context dependent, and digital literacies need to be defined and conceptualised within a specific context.…

For agentive and influential involvement in online communities, language learners and teachers need to develop critical digital literacy (CDL), conceptualized by Darvin (2017) as an awareness of "how meanings are represented in ways that maintain and reproduce relations of power" (p. 5) and thus privilege some and marginalize others…

Feedback practices for students' speaking activities in an online environment are very different from those on-site. This study investigated online feedback practices for speaking skills in a Sino-UK joint-venture university, as well as teachers and students' perceptions of the practices. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with four…

This study aims to understand how pandemic-driven remote online education has shaped foreign language learning in higher education for English language learners. Group interviews and questionnaires were used to collect data from Chinese international students studying English at a UK-based university. The results revealed that these students…

This article discusses Vietnam Virtual EXchange for English Language Teaching (ViVEXELT), a project funded by the British Council -- Vietnam (Digital Learning Innovation Fund Pilot -- Response to COVID-19). It makes a substantial contribution to the theorization of Virtual Exchange as a fertile and inclusive knowledge-sharing Third Space. ViVEXELT…

The theorization of how multimodal learning intersects with online teaching environments has emerged as a key research area in relationship to the creation of opportunities for L2 online interaction. However, there are few studies which have examined how cross-cultural dyads harness and orchestrate semiotic resources across mobile technologies…

By using small focus group discussions, the present study aims to gain insight into students' perceptions about the impact of WhatsApp use in their learning process. More specifically, this study presents a cross-cultural analysis of British and Spanish university students' personal beliefs about the effectiveness of using WhatsApp to complete…

The advance of educational technologies and digital devices have made computer-assisted language learning (CALL) an active interdisciplinary field with increasing research potential and topic diversity. Questions like "what topics and technologies attract the interest of the CALL community?," "how have these topics and technologies…

This paper presents a six-week telecollaborative project carried out between B2 (Common European Framework of Reference for languages -- CEFR) level learners of English from the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Spain, and B1 (CEFR) level students of Spanish as a foreign language from the University of Bath (UK). The aim of the project…

Online learning environments afford opportunities for participation and equally offer a new perspective on engaging vicariously. Drawing on the concept of vicarious learning and taking account of the roles of input and interaction for language development, this paper reports on an enquiry into students' retrospective use of recorded group…

This chapter is based on a workshop at IVEC 2020 which presented a model of Virtual Exchange (VE) facilitated by interactive, digital, and cultural artefacts created using a progressive web app developed by the EU-funded ENACT project team. The model offers an innovative approach to online intercultural exchange through the opportunity to create,…

This paper reports on how the FutureLearn Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) "Becoming a Better Teacher" was blended into English Language Teaching (ELT) university programmes in conjunction with telecollaboration. It discusses how the addition of a MOOC blend can enhance a telecollaborative exchange by adding to it increased…

This paper reviews three attempts to incorporate technology-enabled online volunteer translation communities into language teaching in formal education. Through taking part in these communities, participants can develop many important skills, including digital, participatory, and information literacy, alongside improving their language skills and…

Twitter has over 326 million monthly active users with the number of daily users growing every year since 2016 and is increasingly used by students and academics to interact and build online learning communities. For distance language learners, Twitter offers an open, free, and accessible environment for interaction and engagement which is…

Speaking in Chinese is problematic for all learners, particularly for beginners and more so during online interaction. Despite the fact that interaction has been identified as crucial for the development of speaking skills, it can be hindered by students' lack of language competence or their anxiety. Teacher-centred practices in tutorials can…