Developing Oral Communicative Competence: The Affordances of Language Exchange via Skype

摘要

Introduction Opportunities for learners of foreign languages to learn, practise or “use” the target language in authentic contexts are limited. What often characterizes second language (L2) learning is the lack of linguistically and culturally authentic environments in which the target language is spoken, and the lack of adequate in-class time for the learner to practise speaking the target language. The proposed research design will address these issues by developing an online language exchange program that will take part of the language learning out of the classroom and into the “real world”.