The activity was so successful with the classes of both teachers that they decided
to continue the collaboration. Another reason why the teachers wanted to extend
the project is because the students ‘wanted so much to communicate with the
other teacher’s students – not just the teacher’ and they also didn’t want the
experience to end. Because of time differences, a Facebook group was chosen for
the next stage of the learners’ communication, and the teachers set up a private
group (www.facebook.com/groups/argentegypt), to let the learners communicate
with each other online. The teachers chose Facebook because the students already
used this social network, spending lots of time on it. The learners joined the group
voluntarily, asking each other questions about a range of topics, and sharing
information about their own lifestyle, culture, traditions, festivals, some linguistic
points, idioms or expressions etc. Ayat and Maria believed that it was very important
to set a rule that all communication in the group should be in English, which was an
important objective to practise the language. However, later on they allowed some
Spanish and Arabic words because the learners in both classes wanted to know
some basic words of the other language.