Telecommunicational Project Juniata College - Tomsk Polytechnic University

This is the group for students collaboration in the context of the telecommunicational project between Juniata College (The USA) and Tomsk Polytechnic University (Russia). What is a telecommunicational project? It is one of the innovative methods of teaching which helps to develop sociocultural competence. By means of collaboration with native speakers via the Internet, students not only master their language but acquire the knowledge about an Egllish-speaking (Russian-speaking) country. Moreover, this is a two-way communication because the students will have the opportunity to speak (to write in) two languages - their mother-tongue and a foreign language. How we are going to work: First of all, we decide on the topics for writing (they should be based on the topics studied during the term). Then we set the deadlines for the outcoming letters (once a week or every two weeks). After that the collaboration begins. The students should write and reply regularly, if needed discussing the received letters with the teacher during the classes. The topics for Russian students ought to be discussed in English and those for American ones in Russian. It means that during one week they write each other in one language and the other week they swap the language and so on. The collaboration will last till the end of the second term. Finally, at the end of the second term the results can be posted up on the Internet.