Communication leads to community, that is, to understanding, intimacy and mutual valuing

This entry is about explaining the ideas of telecollaboration and how it can be beneficial for developing intercultural on writing and speaking tasks.

What is telecollaboration?

It is connecting learners from different part of the world through different types of technological devices such as emails, social networks, instant messaging apps, blogs, wikis or online learning environments that allow them to share their culture and approach a different culture than theirs.

There are three different types according to the implementation that the teacher and the learners what to develop within their classes.

Tandem language learning (e-tandem as its online equivalent)

·         It involves a language exchange and collaboration between two partners of different mother tongue

·         Learners must make use of both languages during an hour or so

·         learners speak in their mother tongue for thirty minutes and switch to practice their target language

·         Partners act as peer tutors providing feedback on their productions

·         This interaction aims to extend and support the practice of a foreign language outside the classroom

Telecollaboration promoting intercultural exchange

·         It focuses on linguistics and intercultural competences

·         There must be a connection between what is done in the classroom and the online exchange that will happen: for example reading materials on certain topics in class and then having an online discussion

·         Students work together to produce content together (presentations, , posters, portfolios, essay, blogs, etc.,) based on their discussions

·         It can be bilingual (as in tandem) or use a target language as a lingua franca to communicate.

Telecollaboration 2.0 promoting an intercultural exchange

·         It focuses on linguistic competences, intercultural competence and online literacy

·         It enhance different forms of communication such as asynchronous, synchronous, emails, etc.

·         It encourages learners to make use of web 2.0 tools such as blogs, wikis and social networking sites.

·         It empowers learners to be more independent in their learning process and encourage them to use a mix of different digital technologies for improving their language proficiency.

·         Learners can establish contact with online communities to interact outside their formal learning, environment to produce their own content

·         It can be bilingual (as in tandem) or use a target language as a lingua franca to communicate.

When developing telecollaborative tasks there are three main categories that have to be taken into account:

·         Tasks designed to foster Information Exchange mainly used at the introduction stage, where students interact via the exchange of basic personal information. This may be conducted by providing cultural autobiographies, virtual interviews and informal conversation.

·         Comparison and Analysis tasks are more demanding as they go beyond information exchange and require participants to compare and critically analyze cultural artefacts from their respective cultures

·         Collaborative tasks are aimed at the co-production, i.e. the creation of a joint artefact, in the form of an essay, presentation, translation or cultural adaptation of a text. This type of activity is designed to engender a context in which participants actively negotiate meaning linguistically and culturally, and reach an agreement on their final co-production arising from their collaboration

As it can be seen, there are many advantages that telecollaboration can provide into your classroom, it can motivate students and help them to improve their language, social and cultural skills.

From my point of view, it is an interesting project that can be implemented with our students; I am still in the process of finding colleagues, who are interested in carrying out this project, through different educational platforms, social networks and connections. It is not easy to get in touch with teachers who are willing to cooperate and collaborate; however, once it starts I believe it will bring lot of benefits to our classes.