Dos and Don’ts of an Effective Telecollaboration Project

Abstract

This paper is based on the reflections from a telecollaboration project between English as a foreign language (EFL) learners in Turkey and native or non-native speakers of English in the USA. The main purpose of the project was to help the participants to develop their intercultural communicative competence (ICC) via online (a)synchronous communication tools. Therefore, the participants were engaged in tasks, by which they could share their thoughts about cultural issues and expand their (inter)cultural knowledge. The findings showed that telecollaboration projects are potentially key to developing language users’ ICC, helping them acquire and improve essential skills and attitudes. However, the study also showed that all the positive effects of the telecollaboration projects cannot be given to the project itself. The efficiency of such projects relies on certain dos and don’ts with which whoever will perform such projects in the future requires to be careful. This paper intends to provide precise guidance about designing telecollaboration projects together with an understanding of its constraints.