This article, a case study of a single instance of collaborative translation in the classroom, explores the role of material mediation and embodied activity in the linguistic problem solving work of emergent multilinguals. We describe one teacher's lesson with a small group of Spanish speaking students in her 7th grade ESL classroom. Collaborative…

This study aimed to foster development of the 21st-century five core competencies, including Creativity and innovation, Critical thinking and problem solving, Communication, Collaboration, and Computer-information literacy using Student-Centered Active Learning in an instructional design in which student groups created their own virtual reality…

In this empirical study, we analyse how five-year-old children are socialised into particular interpretive practices indicative of a literate mind. The data come from translation activities where children with their teacher listen to and then talk about how to understand the lyrics to a popular children's song. The setting is a Finnish-Swedish…

According to research in pragmatics, gender represents an important factor in individuals' turn-taking behaviour, with results indicating overall male-dominated conversational patterns. Despite the significance of gender in the students' conversational styles in an academic setting, gender and turn-taking has yet to be investigated in the foreign…

This paper reports on the interaction between upper intermediate German as a Foreign Language (GFL) learners in Tokyo and prospective GFL teachers in Berlin in an online videoconferencing environment. It focuses on the way problems in comprehension and production are brought up and solved in the subsequent interaction. Our findings illustrate that…

According to Swain, Kinnear, & Steinman (2011), we use a language with others as a form of shared cognition, and in the process we scaffold each other. This action research investigates how students' online written output affects each other's writing. One thousand twenty online entries written by 21 Japanese university sophomore English majors…

This article explores the notion of "active reception" during small-group collaborative interaction in the foreign language classroom, focusing on the embodied participation of a secondary (nonspeaking) interactant, Diane. Drawing on Vygotskian sociocultural theory, we argue that within small-group work, a Zone of Proximal Development…

This study investigated how synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) and face-to-face (F2F) oral interaction influence the way in which learners collaborate in language learning and how they solve their communicative problems. The findings suggest that output modality may affect how learners produce language, attend to linguistic forms,…

Interactional communicative competence and higher-order thinking have been well documented as two of the biggest challenges for second/foreign language learners (EFL learners). This paper evaluates the use of digital tabletops as tools for problem-solving tasks in groups. The evaluation is based on a preliminary study of an application of the use…

While disagreements are often considered dispreferred choices and potentially face-threatening acts due to their oppositional nature, this perception does not adequately reflect the importance of disagreeing for many types of interaction, such as problem-solving and decision-making. Developing ability in performing this speech act therefore…

Grounded in Vygotskyan sociocultural theory, this qualitative, classroom-based investigation incorporates an open-ended task framework. Open tasks in the present study were defined as ones designed to take shape in the second language classroom as teacher and adult learners jointly worked through exploratory problems. One central feature of open…

Trinity College Dublin was proud to host, in April 2016, the Second International Conference on Telecollaboration in Higher Education, with the theme "New Directions in Telecollaborative Research and Practice." Over two and a half days, 150 participants offered 95 research presentations, posters, and "problem shared" sessions.…

The disconnection between what counts as social research (SR) and what serves society's needs and interests results in a way of theorizing which, while useful, does not integrate theory and practice; a form of social theory that is not embodied in real lives and does not help non-academic people understand their contexts and practices. This…

Investigated interaction styles and success at problem solving by students of English as a Second Language. The most interesting outcome of this study was the finding that when passive learners were paired with active ones, these pairs were as effective as dyads made up of only active ones. (26 references) (Author/VWL)

Suggests that classroom activities that emphasize interaction help students to use language. Interaction allows students to practice being effective speakers by developing two needed sets of skills: managing an interaction and negotiating meaning. Provides examples of problem solving activities for use in the language classroom. (Author/VWL)