Developing multiliteracies in ELT through telecollaboration

Communicating and collaborating in online contexts can be quite different from face-to-face situations and requires students to acquire multiple literacies in addition to foreign language skills and intercultural communicative competence. This paper looks at how the development of multiliteracies can be included in the EFL classroom through the practice of telecollaboration, that is internet-mediated intercultural exchange. The integration of multiliteracies in the task design of the three stages of a telecollaboration project is illustrated through practical examples from an exchange which used English as a lingua franca.