Intercultural Possibilities of Foreign Language Writing Exchanges Online

Abstract

This chapter presents findings from a four-year research engagement with a school in New Zealand that has embraced the opportunity to teach foreign languages to reach its vision of educating global citizens in the 21st century. We investigated the effectiveness of an online peer-tutoring initiative between the school’s Year 7 and 8 (11+ to 13+ years of age) students learning Spanish as a foreign language, paired with similar-aged students in Colombia who were learning English as a foreign language. The programme was built on the desire to provide authentic opportunities for foreign language interaction and intercultural communication as students developed their writing skills in the target language. Through interviews with the school’s principal, teachers of Spanish and selected students, we assessed the potential of online reciprocal role peer tutoring to enhance both the students’ FL skills and their intercultural proficiencies. Although linguistic gains were modest, the evaluation of the programme against the framework for intercultural communicative language learning set in the New Zealand context proved that online written communication with peers overseas is most promising to develop intercultural competencies.