A Bulgarian teacher presents her experience and self-training in ICT. Starting with changes in society, social status of teachers, use of ICT in classrooms and teacher training; the author then focuses on her own institution. This article shows the ICT usage in the writer’s school through institutional support, teachers, students, ICT tools available and organization of class activities with ICT. eTwinning, www.etwinning.net, is given as an example of successful online foreign language teaching (FLT) activity. The paper ends with hopes for faster ICT development in Bulgarian school education, linked to the newly elected Bulgarian government.
The paper presents the results of a telecollaborative project between BA students of the University of Warsaw and students of the University of Valladolid within the framework of the European Erasmus+ EVALUATE project. The aim of that project is to justify the effectiveness of telecollaborative activities for professional development of future language teachers. The experience confirms that initial intercultural competence is essential for undertaking such a project. It also validates the need for blending professional preparation of language teachers so that they realize that the teaching methods and pedagogical approaches which are introduced in their pre-service courses are very similar or even the same irrespectively where they get their qualifications. Such blended learning activities are complementary to national teacher training programs and to Erasmus+ students exchange projects.
This paper deals with the implementation of concordancers for the purpose of stimulating reflection on experience in telecollaborative translation projects at university level. The paper opens with a brief presentation of the rationale for the use of telecollaboration in contemporary translation and translator education. Then collaboration and telecollaboration are described as teaching/learning modes, with the latter presented as a computer-mediated extension of the former. Subsequently, the theoretical standing of collaboration in translator education is discussed, together with the learning gains that telecollaboration potentially offers to student translators. On a more practical note, on the basis of his own research conducted so far, the author presents means of eliciting reflection in telecollaborative translation projects administered at university level and introduces the idea of a concordancer as a tool for stimulating deepened reflection in such projects. The paper concludes with a summary of the benefits that concordancing brings to telecollaborative translation projects.
The article presents the benefits of virtual exchanges/telecollaboration in higher education. Telecollaboration is a form of virtual mobility which can complement or substitute physical mobility. Taking part in virtual exchanges brings benefits which are in line with the recent European recommendations on education. Importantly, telecollaboration requires lower financial outlays and less time comparing to participation in physical exchanges. Thus, its implementation allows the development of various competences (linguistic, digital, intercultural, etc.) despite students’ economic and personal situation. The second part of the study presents a Polish-Italian virtual exchange conducted in the 2018/2019 academic year between the Marie Curie-Skłodowska University and the University of Turin. During the exchange learners of Polish and learners of Italian played the role of their mother tongue teachers. The research aimed to determine whether such a structure of virtual exchange is possible to be successfully implemented among students at the bachelor level. Three factors were analysed during the project: the students’ choice of online tools, forms of presenting language content to partners, and acts of code switching. The data were collected from the students’ production in telecollaborative tasks. It was found that giving students the possibility to choose the language code autonomously did not affect the exchange negatively. However, the students were not sufficiently prepared to act as teachers. Despite being familiar with various online tools, they chose those not adapted to the digital environment, and they found the language issues too complex to be successfully explained to their exchange partners.
In today’s world interactions between language learners take place not only in a direct form but also online. Online communication requires adequate forms of teaching, one of which can be learning through virtual exchanges. This paper shows how this form of learning allows to use the skills characteristic of online interactions defined in the CEFR Companion Volume. The research presented herein is based on data collected during a Polish-Italian virtual exchange. The quantitative and qualitative analysis of level A1 Italian students’ statements gathered during the project showed that participation in the virtual exchange was an opportunity for learners to use various skills related to online conversation and discussion defined in the CERF Companion Volume. The results also show that the number of statements created by the learners was significantly higher than the minimum necessary to complete the assigned tasks. Furthermore, the students demonstrated many online interaction skills ascribed to level A2, thus exceeding the level of their Italian language proficiency. For this reason, it can be concluded that virtual exchanges are an engaging form of learning for students, even at the beginner level, which allows them to unlock their potential for communicating in the target language with the use of online interaction skills.
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