International Collaborations

VE: Reflecting Intercultural Communicative Competence in a Foreign Language Class

Funded by EVOLVE (Evidence Validated Online Learning Through Virtual Exchange)

https://evolve-erasmus.eu/collaboration/reflecting-intercultural-communicative-competence-in-a-foreign-language-class/ (This is the link from the official EVOLVE page)

March 2020 – April 2020

Project description

Our Virtual Exchange project was done in collaboration with Taipei Medical University (TMU) in Taiwan. It was promoted by EVOLVE. Chemical Engineering and Medicine students participated in it and interacted with each other in semi-authentic situations. Synchronous and asynchronous sessions were carried out. Synchronous sessions were carried out through Zoom and Facebook LiveStream whereas asyncrhonous sessions were carried out through Google Drive, Messenger and Facebook. This 5-week Virtual Exchange (VE) project was based on task-based language teaching (TBLT) and involved weekly tasks, prepared by the instructors, which students were asked to prepare and work on. Pre-meeting scaffolding background knowledge preparations, synchronous on-line interactive meetings and post- meetings reflective e-journals were part of the project. For the Cyprus University of Technology, the collaboration was part of the Spring 2020 course "English for Chemical Engineering", offered by the Language Centre - Cyprus University of Technology.

The goals of our project were:

a) to raise interdisciplinary intercultural awareness among the students and

b) find possible future cooperation opportunities,

all through the use of English as a foreign language (EFL).

c) to find ways of battling the COVID-19 pandemic through interdisciplinary cooperation

Instructors:

TMU: Dr. Ophelia Huang was the leader of the Taiwanese team.

CUT: Maria Christoforou was the leader of the Cypriot team.

We would like to thank ALL of the students for their enthusiasm and positive attitude in this project!