Self-regulation strategies in foreign language virtual exchanges

Despite the growing popularity of virtual exchanges (VEs) for their potential for collaborative work in all areas of education, not much research has been done about their use for the development of self-regulation strategies, which are essential for language learning. To address this gap, this exploratory study investigates which self-regulation strategies higher education students employ when interacting virtually in their L2 with peers from another university. The participants of the study consisted of 45 students from two universities in Spain enrolled in content and language integrated learning courses (CLIL) with similar syllabi. Starting from existing criteria for self-regulation previously proposed for face-to-face communication (Martínez-Adrián et al., 2019), four weeks of interactions of nine groups of students were analysed. The results of the study provide evidence of the potential of VEs to support virtual and task-oriented content and language learning experiences and boost the use of self-regulated strategies in oral communication. In addition, by investigating technology-mediated interactions, it was found that other types of self-regulation not found in face-to-face interaction are present and should be considered in future research.