Intercultural communicative competence development through synchronous virtual exchange

Abstract

Virtual Exchange (VE) in second language education refers to a technology-enabled, interactive, intercultural experience that is designed to increase learners’ intercultural communicative competence and performance. In this paper the findings of a bilingual (English/Turkish), synchronous video communication project among 31 US and Turkish college students are presented. Thematic analysis was used in this study. The results show that the VE – to a certain extent and similarly to other research studies – achieves the learning objectives of not only increased cultural awareness and communicative competence about the target culture and language itself but also the growth of factual knowledge about diverse topics that the students are interested in learning.