1 Instructional Design Based on Interaction for the Development of Communicative Competence

Abstract

This paper describes a research project aimed at analyzing students’ Communicative Competence in a virtual English course which was modified according to principles of the RASE (Resources, Activities, Support and Evaluation) techno pedagogical model and the communicative approach to language teaching (CLT). The study is based on a convergent mixed methods design, with control and experimental groups. From the quantitative perspective, it employed a repeated measures design in three moments, demonstrating that the experimental group showed improvements due to the modifications to the instructional design. From the qualitative perspective, the communicative acts in four critical incidents were observed during synchronous sessions, showing that the modifications to the instructional design benefited the students’ formal assessments of their communicative competence, as well as their performance in other interactions in which different micro and macro lang uage skills became more complex