Heritage Language Long-Distance Acquisition in Remote Areas—Implementing Telecollaboration in Social Media to Increase Exposure to Polish Language and Culture

Abstract

This paper reports on a study conducted during the implementation of the Polish language and culture promotion project, run by Maria Curie-Skłodowska University and financed by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange. In this project, Polish students were involved in telecollaboration with Brazilians from the Ijui region. The aim of this study was to investigate the possibilities of arranging heritage language acquisition through telecollaboration via social media. Due to the isolation of many communities, telecollaboration can be a useful method facilitating heritage language and culture acquisition across the world. This article used the case study method, in which the “Language Clinic” component of the project was taken under detailed scrutiny.
 The project showed language shift and translanguaging as it happened—initially, the students from Brazil used English as a lingua franca and as a classroom language; however, once they grew more confident, they replaced English with Polish as the target language. For Polish student assistants, participation in the project brought about many benefits: increased orthophonic awareness, gaining an understanding of how careless articulation and inappropriate intonation of the utterance may lead to communication breakdown.