Longitudinal videoconferencing and confidence development: The impact of perceived interlocutor cultural depth, richness, and self-involvement

Abstract

Now more than ever before, language learners can autonomously engage with the target culture beyond the classroom through international television shows, online forums, video clips, and study abroad. Still, much of the literature has deemed the target-language dominant speaker (TLDS) as a key source of cultural knowledge, and, thus, the principal aim here is to ascertain how paid TLDSs and student peers are perceived in terms of their cultural expertise and whether these perceptions affect learners’ confidence development over time. This research is guided by the functional model of second language confidence (FML2C), which integrates the contact space dimensions of richness and self-involvement, and novel to this study is cultural depth. In terms of procedure, 32 second language learners of Spanish carried out eight 30-minute videoconferences over 12 weeks, four with a peer and four with a TLDS on Talk Abroad. In terms of the FML2C, the results revealed that the TLDSs were considered to afford significantly more richness and cultural depth than peers. In spite of this, longitudinal gains in learner confidence were indistinguishable by interlocutor type, suggesting that videoconferencing over time is beneficial, no matter the interlocutor with whom it is realized.