O n f e r e n c e

Concluding remarks
The affordances of telecollaboration for foreign language learning in tertiary education 
have been confirmed by numerous publications and there may be grounds to believe that 
they also apply to secondary school classrooms. As stated at the beginning of this paper, 
research studies evaluating the affordances of online foreign language interaction 
amongst secondary school students are few and far between, although the present study 
presents encouraging data. A total of 77 students from 5 European countries completed a 
background and user experience questionnaire after undertaking a number of online 
foreign language interaction tasks.

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2014 CALL Conference 
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The data gathered indicates that the experience has been very well received by the 
majority of the participants, whose rating were positive despite the technical problems 
reported. Students find it motivating and enjoyable to communicate in the foreign 
language with peers from other countries and they like this way of learning a foreign 
language. All the tools used for the language interactions were positively valued, 
although the students who communicated via the virtual world OpenSim claimed to feel 
less nervous and more at ease than those using videoconferencing software such as Big 
Blue Button or Skype. The participants’ young age posed difficulties in terms of the data 
collection tools used, as the question’s format, wording and questionnaire’s length had to 
be adjusted accordingly. However, data was collected satisfactorily and the information 
obtained was found to be reliable and meaningful. Further research is yet needed to gain 
insight into aspects such as lingua franca versus tandem interaction in an online setting 
or the effects of anonymity on affective variables such as anxiety, self-efficacy beliefs or 
willingness to communicate, particularly so with young learners.