Identitätsarbeit und Rollenverständnis durch persönliche Narrationen in Virtuellen Austauschen zwischen deutschen und israelischen Studierenden

Digitalization is essential in daily life, especially in education, and has been further emphasized by the COVID-19 pandemic since 2020. Schools and universities are demanding digital development. To date, little progress has been made in virtual and transnational exchange programs for foreign language student teachers from diverse cultural backgrounds. These learners could greatly benefit from enhanced development of foreign language and intercultural communicative competencies (O’Dowd 2006, 2021). A group of Israeli and German students took part in a four-week virtual exchange project. The students collaborated on concepts for their future foreign language classroom, drawing from their (digital) pandemic experiences. Zoom meetings were recorded and multimodally transcribed for research purposes. The essay provides insight into a conducted PhD research project analyzing online personal narratives resulting from given impulses and assigned tasks. Using a phenomenological approach, an example sequence was selected. The findings will illuminate the discourse development of participants' secondary conversations („off-task-talks“) and their (situated) concept of roles and identities presented in the discourse.