Asynchronous virtual exchange and young English learners’ intercultural communicative competence

Abstract Virtual Exchange, by definition, connects groups of students in different countries for online intercultural communication ( Lewis & O’Dowd, 2016 ). This exploratory study presents and analyses an asynchronous video exchange between sixth grade students in two countries with the goal of exploring which of Byram’s objectives for intercultural communicative competence ( 2021 ) can be addressed with young learners. The asynchronous video exchange project presented in this article was carried out between young English learners in Germany and English L1 speakers in the United States. Transcripts and observation notes from project meetings in Germany and transcripts of two videoconferences held with the two groups at the beginning and end of the exchange were analyzed qualitatively using Byram’s objectives for intercultural communicative competence ( 2021 ) as deductive codes in order to reveal which objectives were addressed during the exchange project. Eighteen of Byram’s 30 objectives were addressed to some degree in the current project. Those objectives will be discussed and considerations for future exchanges will be presented in view of these initial results.