Online collaboration can be a powerful means of encouraging language learners to make connections between their local community and people from other cultural backgrounds. In doing so, learners develop their language skills while exploring different attitudes, values and beliefs. The authors of this book draw on 20 years of participation in numerous online intercultural exchanges to offer teachers a down-to-earth guide to finding partners, choosing a platform and designing online exchanges. They share their experience of working with learners to ensure that deep intercultural learning occurs alongside language development. This book offers strategies for mediating conflict with partners and participants, and guidance on the assessment of linguistic and intercultural competences. It is a practical resource for language teachers, informed by the latest research on language teaching and intercultural telecollaborations and situated in the reality of classrooms around the world.
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introducing Online Intercultural Exchanges
Chapter 2. Finding Partners
Chapter 3. Choosing an Appropriate Platform
Chapter 4. Agreeing Goals
Chapter 5. Ethics, Netiquette and Security
Chapter 6. Initiating Online Discussions: Breaking the Ice
Chapter 7. Designing Online Intercultural Tasks
Chapter 8. Negotiating Identity and Managing Rapport
Chapter 9. The Instructor’s Roles: To Intervene or Not?
Chapter 10. Coping with Problems
Chapter 11. Organising a Videoconference
Chapter 12. Learners’ Language as Classroom Data
Chapter 13. Assessing Participants’ Performance
Chapter 14. Evaluating an Online Intercultural Exchange
Chapter 15. Developing an Action Research Project
Afterword
References
Index
About the Author :
John Corbett is Professor of English and Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning at BNU-HKBU United International College, China. He is the author of An Intercultural Approach to English Language Teaching (2nd edition, Multilingual Matters, 2022).
Hugo Dart is an English Language Teacher and Teacher Trainer at Instituto Brasil-Estados Unidos, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Bruno Lima is an English Language Teacher and International Mobility Officer at the Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.
Review :
Written in an accessible and unpretentious style, this volume offers educators a practical, step-by-step guide to setting up and running an online intercultural exchange project with their students. The book is full of real examples and personal anecdotes from the authors' own experiences and it will go a long way to answering many of the questions that teachers have when they come to this activity for the first time.
This highly practical and accessible guide provides valuable insights into task design, implementation and assessment in intercultural online exchanges while highlighting how to use emergent tensions for a better understanding of identity dynamics in intercultural dialogue. Suitable for beginners and experienced practitioners, it equips readers with strategies to establish, guide, and evaluate impactful intercultural exchanges in digital contexts.
