One of the new scales in the CEFR Companion Volume is online interaction. The new descriptors cover goal-oriented online transactions, including written correspondence and the use of formulaic language. In Dutch business schools, students learn German for special purposes at B1/2 level: they are expected to master German in a professional context…

Research into the online informal learning of English (OILE) examines how nonnative speakers of English may develop L2 skills through participation in leisure activities on the Internet in the target language. Such activities include, e.g., watching television series, films, or videos, interacting on Facebook, reading articles, or listening to…

This paper examines student-faculty communication by email and the lack of clear guidelines that leads to misuse of email in student-faculty interaction, whereby status-incongruent pragmatic markers are employed, resulting in impoliteness and inappropriateness. The main objective is to bridge the gap in research on other than requestive speech…

This paper presents the findings of a six-week telecollaborative project between sixteen American students enrolled in a second-semester German class at an American university and sixteen German students enrolled in an advanced English course at a high school in Germany. Students discussed various cultural topics with their partner in two e-mails…

This dissertation explores the effects of a cross-cultural, cross-lingual virtual exchange on students' foreign language skills and intercultural competence. Specifically, the dissertation investigates the effects of students' participation in a twelve-week telecollaborative exchange on their use of syntactic complexity in foreign language writing…

Instructors rely on asynchronous exchanges to provide learners with authentic input and opportunities to communicate in the TL. While most practitioners recognize the advantages of e-mail exchanges, learner benefits are not an automatic byproduct of participation in an exchange. This paper presents findings from an e-mail exchange carried out…

Describes a three-year project devoted to fostering semester-long e-mail exchanges between American and German college students. Based on the tandem approach to language learning, peer tutoring via e-mail helped improve students' writing ability and cross-cultural competence. Presents types of writing activities and suggestions for setting up…

The report details the Irish portion of an experiment in tandem language learning by electronic mail (e-mail). The partners were Trinity College, Dublin (Ireland) and Ruhr University, Bochum (Germany), funded by the European Union within the International E-Mail Tandem Network as part of a two-year project. Tandem language learning is a form of…

This book comprises a series of newly commissioned chapters designed to stimulate debate about what kind of language-teaching is appropriate for the new millennium, what skills learners will need to cope with the technological and linguistic demands, and how the two can be synthesized. Collectively, the contributors seek a convergence of views…