Susana Silvia Fernández

Telecollaboration and sociopragmatic awareness in the foreign language classroom

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the design and implementation of a pedagogical intervention aimed at raising sociopragmatic awareness in the context of Spanish as a foreign language in Denmark. The intervention consists of a blended-learning environment where the three main components are synchronous telecollaboration via Skype, reflection sessions in groups and teacher-driven instructional sessions. We will argue that telecollaboration not only provides Danish students of Spanish (who normally have very little contact with native Spanish speakers) with opportunities for interaction with Spanish speakers, but also constitutes an excellent source of learner-generated data, as the video recorded interactions become the focus of the reflection sections and the inspiration for the theoretical instruction on pragmatics. We will discuss the theoretical background and the rationale of the intervention as well as the details concerning its implementation, and we will present our analysis of two case-studies in order to illustrate some of the learning gains observed.

Intercultural Competence in Synchronous Communication between Native and Non-Native Speakers of Spanish.

Abstract This paper discusses to what extent synchronous communication via Skype by Argentine university students of History and Danish university students of Spanish contributed to fostering intercultural competence in the two groups of participants. Intercultural gains are considered both as part of the planned tasks to be solved by the participants (intentional learning) and in the spontaneous communication that arose in the course of the Skype conversations (incidental learning). The overall objective of this telecollaboration project has been the promotion of intercultural competence, with particular focus on the learning and teaching of Argentine regional history. Several tools, synchronous and asynchronous, were used for this purpose. The focus of the present paper will be the analysis of instances of intercultural awareness observed in Skype conversations, and of the affordances and obstacles that this modality of communication seems to pose for the native and non-native participants.