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communication and new technologies can certainly facilitate this essential aspect through, for example, videoconferencing and blogging. There are also lots of ways of recording and editing audio as a method of improving pronunciation, boosting learner confidence, extending speaking skills and deepening understanding. Filmmaking and animation also draw on a variety of useful skills and promote creativity, collaboration and personalised learning.

Technology is not going away and language teachers need to embrace its full potential to engage our 21st century learners.

It offers an authentic learning environment, in which language learners can orally and visually interact with another human being in the target language much in the same ways as in face-to-face interaction. However, research on oral-visual interaction in CMC has only occupied a marginal status in CMC research.

Cognitively and linguistically, it is generally maintained that paralinguistic cues such as head nods and facial expressions reduce ambiguity in speech and improve understanding

Signs of comprehension, frustration, nervousness, and enjoyment were all evident in real time.

More importantly, there is a crucial pedagogical concern at the heart of this research, that is, for distance language professionals to be open to the use of whatever technology available to maximize the level and quality of oral-visual interaction, and in so doing, create a more effective and efficient learning environment for distance language learners. Although the technology is changing rapidly, the larger pedagogical issue contained in this research is unlimited and beyond obsolescence.

It is not an exaggeration to say that Internet-based real time technology is changing distance education quantitatively as well as qualitatively, and this research represents only the beginning of the important effort to make distance language learning a more effective endeavor.