Technology use in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) programmes is seen as a strategy to support pedagogical innovation and intensifying growth in post-secondary international student enrolments. This article discusses government-funded research documenting the largely undefined use of technologies in post-secondary North American EAP programmes. This study surveyed EAP teachers and administrators in over 40 universities and colleges across North America using qualitative and quantitative approaches. Site visits involving classroom observations, interviews with teachers and administrators, student focus groups and student surveys were then conducted to deepen understanding of the affordances of technology-mediated EAP approaches from stakeholder perspectives in situated post-secondary contexts. Findings reveal widespread enthusiasm about emerging technologies to engage learners, develop autonomous learning, instructional pathways and transferable 21st century skills. However, despite this enthusiasm, many participating teachers, administrators and students also expressed critical views towards technology integration. Instructors noted time, lack of pedagogical guidance and vision, inadequate support, and training impacting their actual use and visions of technology use. Participants also revealed a ‘visioning’ dilemma where they had difficulty identifying the potential of emerging technologies that they had no concrete experience with. Findings suggest the need for sound theoretically informed techno-pedagogy in order to support technology integration in EAP. Implications for teacher education, further research and EAP teaching and curriculum design in today’s digital era conclude the article.
Given the emerging focus on the intercultural dimension in language teaching and learning, language educators have been exploring the use of information and communications technology ICT-mediated language learning environments to link learners in intercultural language learning communities around the globe. Despite the potential promise of ICT-mediated learning, research has identified a number of challenges including inadequate pedagogy that limit intercultural and language learning in these online intercultural collaborations. This article will review these challenges and will outline a three-part working model to guide the integration of online intercultural collaboration into classroom language teaching. This emerging framework is developed around the need to engage learners in the planning and preparation of these collaborations, to build identity investment and sense of community in these projects and to actively work with intercultural content and rich points to deepen intercultural language learning processes.Keywords: intercultural online language learning; telecollaborative exchange; intercultural language teaching; online intercultural pedagogy; pedagogical framework IntroductionEmerging technologies offer a wealth of intercultural language learning opportunities for language learners around the world. Today, information and communication technologies (ICTs) offer second/additional language teachers a wide range of constructivist tools to build interactive, engaging learning environments that develop intercultural communicative competence (Byram 1997): the intercultural awareness, communication, and interpreting skills being called for in today's language learning programs. Web 2.0 technologies including blogs, wikis, Moodle, and social networking tools promote intense collaboration with target language speakers and peer language learners. These tools can enhance learner autonomy, offer multimodal target language-and-culture input, and extensive opportunities for the authentic negotiation of meaning in intercultural learning environments. Tandem learning or telecollaborative exchanges where groups of learners work with others across time and space afford language learning communities unique possibilities to develop the linguistic and intercultural skills needed in today's globally interconnected societies (Byram 1997;Lawrence et al. 2009).Such technology-mediated learning environments support the development of this intercultural dimension in language teaching/learning that is being increasingly
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