Call 2012 -the Medium Matters E-mail Address: [email protected]; Thierry.chanier@univ

The interest in synthetic worlds for both language education (Molka-Danielson & Deutschmann, 2009) and architectural design (Gu. et al., 2009), coupled with the need of architects to develop adequate foreign language (L2) skills facilitating mobility and employability, led to the design of "Building Fragile Spaces." This hybrid Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) course was held in Spring 2011. It included distance French and English L2 activities, conducted in the synthetic world Second Life, which incorporated both architectural and linguistic objectives. Our study of the "Building Fragile Spaces" course sheds light on how communication in the synthetic world is organised for pedagogical purposes. We focus on the usage and interaction between the textchat and audio modalities. Our analysis employs data provided from multimodal transcriptions of six group reflective sessions, transcribed according to a predefined methodology (Wigham & Chanier, in print). We show how, depending on the tutor's stance towards the texchat, turns in the textchat modality can help structure and support the L2 interactions. We also describe the use of the textchat modality by one tutor for linguistic correction and the incorporation of these corrections in the students' discourse.