Innovation in Language Learning

In this paper, we describe the latest iteration of our virtual exchange project (see Absalom and Trapè¹, forthcoming as well as O’Dowd², 2019 for context) between students of Italian in an Australian university and students in a liceo linguistico in Italy. Students, in pairs or groups of three, met online for 4 weeks and, unlike previous virtual exchanges where we prescriptively programmed topics to be discussed, were given the instruction to define their own topics of interest to pursue together. The objective of this freer approach was to encourage students to become stronger agents of meaning-making using the languages at their disposal. As García and Kleifgen³ (2020) note “[t]o liberate the meaning-making potential of […] bilinguals, a translanguaging pedagogy privileges emergence of meaning making, feeling, intensity, and excitement, as it moves the imaginaries of students to make connections across what are perceived and encoded as separate sign systems. Multilinguals can experience a transformation “when they realize the artificial and constructed nature of the categories imposed on them” (Kramsch⁴, 2012, p. 498), and they can then coordinate their own performances without the strictures of external categories.” (p. 560). We explore the range of topics defined by student participants and compare this with both our own previous models for virtual exchange as well as others drawn from the literature. We also detail student responses to their online translanguaging experience. We examine the ramifications of this information for future similar projects but also for meaningful meaning-making for young people in languages education.