Promoting speaking interaction remains a challenge for language massive open online courses (LMOOCs), both from a pedagogical and technological standpoint. This paper describes the design process of the tandemMOOC, which exploits the massive, open and online features of MOOCs in order to offer language learners online speaking interaction practice…

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.…

Virtual exchange (VE) is an umbrella term used to refer to the engagement of groups of students in sustained online intercultural interaction and collaboration with international partners under the guidance of their teachers. In the computer-assisted language learning literature, telecollaboration and eTandem approaches to VE have been researched…

Studies on computer-mediated communication often compare the affective affordances of different technologies with face-to-face communication. This study aimed to understand how three different computer-mediated communication modalities may affect EFL learners' foreign language anxiety (FLA). Using a counterbalanced 3 by 3 factorial design, 30…

Drawing upon research on narrative and speech styles and on digital and multimodal communication, the author proposes multimodal narrative discourse analysis (MNDA) with associated pedagogical and analytical procedures to teach and study storytelling. The second language (L2) students first participated in multimodal narrative simulations in the…

The study of multimodality in communication has attracted the attention of researchers studying online multimodal environments such as virtual worlds. Specifically, 3D virtual worlds have especially attracted the interest of educators and academics due to the multiplicity of verbal channels, which are often comprised of text and voice channels, as…

This review examines the second language acquisition (SLA) literature with regard to the role of "massively multiplayer online games" (MMOGs) in second language (L2) learning. It focuses on commercially developed off-the-shelf (COTS) MMOGs only (some of them modified for educational purposes such as Reinders' & Wattana's work). It…

This study examines the impact of group composition (one-on-one vs. multiple-to-multiple) and task design (student-selected vs. teacher-assigned) on undergraduate foreign language learners' interactions in a mobile-based intercultural exchange. The participants, 27 Korean students learning English as a foreign language and 27 American students…

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…

Learner agency, the capability of individual human beings to make choices and act on these choices in a way that makes a difference in their lives (Martin, 2004), is instrumental in second language learning because attainment is only arrived at by learner choice (Pavlenko & Lantolf, 2000). If attainment is understood as learner engagement in…

Creating collaborative working and learning experiences has long been at the forefront of computer-assisted language learning research. It is in this context that, in recent years, the integration of social networking sites and Web 2.0 in learning settings has surged, generating new opportunities to establish and explore virtual communities of…

Discussion lists have gained a significant popularity in professional development research over the past few decades for the opportunity they provide for asynchronous interaction. This article presents findings from a small-scale case study that aimed at exploring the nature of teachers' asynchronous exchanges in a discussion list. The data…

This article investigates research approaches used in traditional classroom-based interaction studies for identifying a suitable research method for studies in three-dimensional virtual learning environments (3DVLEs). As opportunities for language learning and teaching in virtual worlds emerge, so too do new research questions. An understanding of…

In this study of affordances for second language (L2) learning in World of Warcraft (WoW) group play, we compared three gameplay episodes spanning a semester-long course. Applying multimodal analysis framed by ecological, dialogical and distributed (EDD) views (Zheng and Newgarden, forthcoming), we explored four English as a second language…

In this digital era, online intercultural exchange has gained increased popularity in language and culture education. However, concerns arise over its productiveness and efficacy in engaging participants cognitively. In addition, there is a paucity of research on out-of-classroom synchronous online exchange projects, let alone those involving…