Virtual exchange Spanish - Portuguese: tasks and topics for communicative interactions from the students' perception

Abstract

Technology-mediated virtual exchanges have been developed in the field of language learning for more than two decades. Many institutions now consider that this practice could both be integrated into the curriculum more systematically and serve as an internationalisation strategy at home. In this article we take as a context a virtual exchange between students of Spanish Literature (University of São Paulo, Brazil) and Portuguese Teaching (National University of Córdoba, Argentina), in order to identify and analyse their perception of the relevance of the different types of tasks and topics proposed for the development of communicative interactions. We used as a theoretical framework the concepts of virtual exchange, communicative competence, intercultural competence, and the description of the types and functions of telecollaborative tasks. The methodology used in the study was action research, which allowed us to observe, on the one hand, that the students considered that the prior indication of the tasks and the discussion topics promoted a deeper and more fluid interaction. On the other hand, they also highlighted the difficulty in choosing the topic and developing it consistently in the free-topic interaction. The data also demonstrated the learners' perception that the tasks and topics worked on helped in the development of communicative competences (mainly at the linguistic and socio-cultural level) and intercultural competences (knowledge of stereotypes, cultural and political aspects, customs of their countries, etc.).