Investigating the effect of an intercultural telecollaboration on Turkish pre-service teachers' communication competence

The 3rd International ILTERG Conference, Nevşehir, Türkiye, 2 - 03 Haziran 2023, ss.130

Telecollaboration is "the use of computer and/or digital communication tools to promote

learning through social interaction and collaboration, thus moving the learning process

beyond the physical boundaries of classrooms" (Dooly, 2017). With this definition in mind,

the objective of the present study is to investigate the possible impact of an intercultural

telecollaboration on Turkish pre-service EFL teachers' communication confidence and

foreign language anxiety. Participants consisted of 48 Turkish pre-service teachers who

joined a telecollaboration with Japanese and Spanish university students for one academic

term. During this period, students worked on various collaborative tasks and the

communication was realized both synchronously and asynchronously. At the end of the term,

participants' opinions on communication confidence and foreign language anxiety were

gathered. Findings revealed that Turkish pre-service teachers benefitted from the intercultural

telecollaboration, and such an opportunity helped participants in increasing their

communication confidence while decreasing their communication anxiety.