Dr Patricia Guill-Garcia

1. Your research interests bring together second language acquisition, discourse analysis and virtual exchange. What originally drew you to this particular intersection of research areas?
I believe the connection between these three areas is a natural one, and it also comes from my own personal experience. I am a linguist by training, so I have always been drawn to language itself and to how it is actually used, especially between learners of said foreign language. This is where discourse analysis comes in, as it gave me the tools to look closely at how meaning is negotiated, how learners position themselves, and how identity is constructed, turn by turn, within interaction. Virtual exchange, in turn, gave me an authentic space where that discourse could actually happen. Having experienced it myself as a student, I was able to see firsthand the benefits it brings to learners. So, in many ways, my background as a linguist naturally pushed me to ask not just why learners succeed or struggle, but how language and meaning unfold in real interaction, and where that interaction could meaningfully take place

2. Your LERC2026 study examines moments when linguistic errors actually trigger negotiation between learners. What led you to look at errors not simply as problems to be corrected, but as potentially meaningful moments of interaction?
This idea, which in the end drives both my research and my approach to teaching, comes from these two contexts. Naturally, over the years in the classroom, I noticed that some of the richest moments of interaction happened not when everything went smoothly, but precisely when something went “wrong”. In virtual exchanges, this is even more noticeable, as students in the exchanges that I organise with my colleagues typically do not share the same L1.
As for research, many scholars have explored this view before me. From an SLA perspective, the interactionist tradition already suggested that comprehension breakdowns can push learners to notice gaps in their own language and to modify their output accordingly. What discourse analysis added for me was a way to look even more closely at that process. In that sense, errors stopped being something to simply flag and correct and became a window into the learning process.

3. Your research distinguishes lexical, grammatical and phonological triggers in audiovisual exchanges between Spanish and Japanese university students. Did any of the interactional patterns you observed challenge or complicate your initial expectations?
One of the most interesting findings was that, contrary to what I expected, many of these triggers were simply passed over. Learners noticed them, or at least seemed to, but did not always stop to negotiate meaning. This was particularly striking given that the interaction takes place entirely in English, which is not the L1 of either group. I had initially expected that this shared “non-native” status, combined with the fact that neither Spanish nor Japanese speakers could rely on their own language as a safety net, would push learners to negotiate more, not less. Instead, it seems that learners often prioritise the flow of communication over precision, choosing to let a trigger go rather than risk disrupting the interaction, at least in this particular virtual exchange.

4. Virtual Exchange is increasingly connecting learners who might otherwise never interact. What do you think it can offer language acquisition that is difficult to reproduce in a conventional classroom?

I think one of the main benefits virtual exchange offers is authenticity. That is something very difficult to reproduce in a conventional classroom, no matter how well designed the activities are. In a regular classroom, students role-play a conversation, or they speak to a classmate who shares their L1 and, often, their cultural background. In virtual exchange, learners are talking to a real interlocutor, with a real communicative need, who does not share their language or, sometimes, key cultural references. This exposes learners to linguistic and cultural diversity that a classroom simply cannot offer on its own, at least not in my higher education context, where the vast majority of my students are Spanish.
However, it is very important to clarify that task design needs to accompany this authenticity. Simply putting learners in contact with one another does not automatically guarantee meaningful interaction, nor that negotiation of meaning will actually take place. Tasks need to be designed in a way that creates a genuine need to communicate. Otherwise, that potential can easily be lost.

5. What would you most like teachers and researchers attending LERC2026 to reconsider about the relationship between learner error, interaction and language development?
That error is something to be minimised or avoided. We often treat error correction and interaction as if they belonged to two separate moments. But what research keeps showing me is that error and interaction are not separate at all. Error is often the very trigger that makes meaningful interaction happen, as it is the moment where learners stop, notice, negotiate, and adjust.
So my invitation to teachers would be to stop seeing errors purely as something to fix, and start seeing them as rich interaction points. And for researchers, I think it means paying closer attention to those micro-moments of interaction, because that is where language development is actually happening.