BUSINESS ENGLISH 3.0 : HANDS-ON ONLINE AND VIRTUAL COLLABORATION TASKS

Business English 3.0: Hands-on Online and Virtual Collaboration Tasks aims to provide a wealth of resources to guide language teachers willing to explore and implement virtual exchanges for language learning for specific purposes through collaborative tasks. It intends to equip language teachers with the necessary guidance and understanding to approach innovation within telecollaborative ESP settings, leading to the development of new forms of learner interaction. Furthermore, it proposes different ways of incorporating these approaches into a curriculum in which, ultimately, learners engage in a common task where each individual depends on and is accountable to each other.
This collaborative effort by ESP specialists and researchers from the iTECLA Project approaches educational innovation by combining:
• English for Specific Purposes, resulting from the firm embedding of English as the lingua franca in business, economy and international trade in an ever-increasing globalised world.
• Virtual Exchange, the practice of engaging classes of geographically dispersed learners in online intercultural exchange using internet communication tools for the development of language and/or intercultural competence.
• Collaborative Learning based on the learners’ efforts to engage in tasks undertaken and resolved collaboratively, capitalizing on one another's resources and skills.
• Digital Storytelling, a short form of digital film-making that allows students to recreate a story relating to their field of study, based on the combination of the art of telling stories with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video.
• And Problem-based Learning, which fosters learning through solving an open-ended problem relating to the learners’ field of study, posed by the instructor for the development of skills that will be used in the learners’ future practice.

The book is particularly useful in higher education contexts where students are traditionally stimulated to become autonomous learners, capable of actively setting the foundations for making sound and meaningful progress in their learning goals.