Project Spotlight: Bilingual Borders – A Mexico/U.S. Virtual Exchange in Intermediate Spanish

Affiliation:	Instructor:	Department/Institution:	Class:
ECU	Javier Lorenzo	Foreign Languages and Literatures	SPAN 3001
Partner	Maria del Carmen Serratos and Erika Gloria Gómez Fernández	Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Azcapotzalco, Mexico City, Mexico	Humanities and Foreign Languages

Project Description:

This COIL project builds on an established weekly bilingual (Spanish/English) virtual exchange between students in SPAN 3001 (Intermediate Spanish Communication Skills) at East Carolina University and students at the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana–Azcapotzalco in Mexico City. Through structured, synchronous online conversations, students engage in guided discussions connected to course themes such as everyday communication, cultural practices, social issues, academic life, and globalization in Mexico and the United States. Each session is supported by collaboratively developed materials that prepare students linguistically and culturally for meaningful dialogue. By integrating these exchanges intentionally into the course curriculum, the project fosters sustained, reciprocal engagement that strengthens oral proficiency, deepens intercultural competence, and encourages reflective comparison of lived experiences in both countries.

Modality:

Synchronous, Facilitated Dialogue

Tools Used:

Zoom; Google Docs

Project Length:

9 Weeks

Learning Outcomes/Goals:

Students will demonstrate increased oral proficiency in Spanish through sustained, structured conversations with native speakers.
Students will develop intercultural competence by comparing perspectives, practices, and experiences in Mexico and the United States.
Students will apply appropriate linguistic and cultural strategies to communicate effectively in a bilingual, transnational academic setting.

Benefits for Students:

It was inspiring to see how students gain confidence and motivation when they realize they can successfully sustain meaningful conversations with peers abroad who are native speakers while engaging real-world cultural and social issues.

Tips:

The most important lesson was that structure creates freedom. Once we designed clear themes, prompts, and shared materials, the conversations came alive in ways that felt spontaneous, authentic, and genuinely collaborative.