ON THE IMPORTANCE OF TELECOLLABORATION FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF STUDENTS’ INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE

Abstract

"Although the idea of performing collaborative tasks by language students from geographically distant countries dates back to the end of the 20th century (Warschauer, 1996), its benefits were reconsidered once again after the Covid-19 pandemic lockdowns had halted students’ mobility and abated their enthusiasm for worldwide discoveries. The latter constraints reduced the number of natural opportunities for students to develop their intercultural communicative competence. To bridge the developmental gap, the attention was shifted toward the application of technologies engaging them in semi-authentic communication (O’Dowd, 2013), consequently, one of the modes of telecollaboration was chosen. The study focuses on the analysis of the outcomes of the telecollaboration project run by the teachers of the four universities: Vilnius University (Lithuania), the University of Latvia (Latvia), Los Lagos University (Chile), and the University of Austral (Chile). All the three stages (before, during, and after interaction) of the project are reviewed with a particular focus given on 64 students’ attitudinal reflections obtained via a designed questionnaire. The study also presents the analysis of the students’ feedback on the project in general, the challenges they were exposed to, and their personal achievements, including the development of intercultural communicative competence."