Does participating in a telecollaborative project foster the acquisition of apologies? Insights from the English for specific purposes context

The aim of the study was to investigate whether telecollaboration is a suitable environment for the acquisition of the speech act of apologies. Participants were aerospace engineering students from the Universitat Politècnica de València (Spain) who performed six open role-plays to elicit apologies. The Control Group (CG, n=17) carried out the task in pairs with their Spanish classmates in a Face-To-Face (FTF) setting, while the Experimental Group (EG, n=7) conducted the task with first language (L1) or highly proficient speakers of English from the University of Bath (UK) through synchronous Zoom sessions. The results of the descriptive analysis revealed a higher tendency of improvement in the EG, which also used a higher number of strategies compared to the CG. Findings from the quantitative analysis carried out through an Eta coefficient revealed a significant correlation (r=.71) between the number of strategies used and the modality where they were performed.