Back to School: Language Exchange Communities

Connecting with Native Speakers: Skype™ and Language Exchange Communities, a presentation by Jeremy Robinson (earthtofu on Skype) at the Bringing it Back: New Ideas for the Language Classroom conference at the Monterey Institute of International Studies on April 25, 2008.

Robinson says bringing classrooms together to study each others' language restores culture education, improving the quality of instruction. He demos Skype, shows how to find other classrooms through ePals, and offers a pedagogy.

Robinson suggests classroom language exchange:

• Raises cultural consciousness
• Is meaningful learning
• Contextualizes linguistic input/output
• Has intrinsic motivation
• Offers learner autonomy
• Builds communicative competence
• Integrates language skills

Robinson suggests iTalki among 19 online language learning communities.

He rightly ignores the sunk costs of computing and communications infrastructure. These new capabilities are free or nearly so, and ride atop previous investments.

tags: skype, education, language, training, communities, epals, italki

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