Abstract

This article reports on two small-scale international projects, both outcomes of a teaching staff exchange, which seek to exploit the potential afforded by new technologies to enrich L2 learning conditions and learners' experience of using the L2 (in this case English) as a lingua franca. Two undergraduate courses, one for professional and one for academic purposes and both corresponding to 6 ECTS, use an integrated approach to skills development. Approximately one fifth of class contact time is devoted to project work. In each project, learners engage in a sequence of closely related interactive tasks which culminate in a video conference. Collaboration in assessment for learning through peer assessment and self-assessment plays a pivotal role in raising learners' awareness of their own and others' communication skills and learning strategies, and provides useful data for teaching-led research. Digital recordings from both projects along with completed assessment forms and post-project and post-course feedback questionnaires provide the data for our study. The research questions reported on here focus on spoken interaction and address such aspects as learners' perceptions of their own and others' strengths, weaknesses and coping strategies. Results suggest that this approach is highly valued and genuinely motivating for learners.