Your students send dozens of messages a day. What if even a fraction of them were in the target language?

Ask a room of language teachers about the interpersonal mode and most of us picture speaking: paired conversations, simulated dialogues, students negotiating meaning out loud. But ACTFL's definition has always been broader than that. Interpersonal communication is a two-way exchange in spoken, signed, or written form, and written examples include letters, emails, and texts. In other words, the group chat counts! It might be the most authentic interpersonal writing genre your students know.

That's worth taking seriously, because interpersonal writing is the mode most of us assign least. We give presentational writing (essays, paragraphs, captions) and we practice interpersonal speaking. The back-and-forth written exchange, where students react to a real partner and adjust based on the reply, often falls through the cracks. Yet it builds the same skills we care about in conversation: asking follow-up questions, reacting to new information, and keeping an exchange alive.

What does an asynchronous writing chat look like?

Picture a small group task that runs like a text thread. You post a prompt, students write a short response in the target language, and then they reply to their partners: asking questions, comparing answers, and reacting to what they read. Because it's asynchronous, the conversation unfolds over a class period or a couple of days instead of in one live burst. Nobody has to perform on the spot, but everybody has to respond to a real human whose answers they can't predict.

That last part is the point. A worksheet can't surprise your students. A partner can, and responding to surprise is where negotiation of meaning happens.

Why does chat-style writing work so well?

It lowers the stakes while keeping the interaction real. Students who freeze in spoken conversation often open up in writing, where they have a moment to think and revise. The genre is familiar, the register is casual, and short messages feel achievable at the novice level. And because everything is written down, you can see the exchange itself: who asked a follow-up question, who circled back to clarify, who kept the thread going.

Five ways to make the most of it

1. Start with topics students already text about. Daily routines, family, hobbies, favorite meals, favorite apps. Familiar content frees up working memory for the language itself, which is exactly what novice writers need.
2. Require a question in every reply. This is the simplest rule that changes everything. A question forces students to read their partner's message instead of skimming it, and it hands the conversation back instead of ending it.
3. Keep the register real. Let students write the way people actually message: short sentences, greetings, reactions. You're building conversational instincts, not paragraph structure. Save the formal conventions for presentational tasks.
4. Use chats as a bridge to speaking. A written exchange on a topic today makes a spoken exchange on the same topic tomorrow far less scary. Students have already rehearsed the vocabulary and the follow-up questions in low-stakes form. It's a natural on-ramp to interpersonal speaking practice.
5. Grade the interaction, not just the grammar. A short rubric that rewards responding, questioning, and staying in the target language tells students what interpersonal writing is actually for. Accuracy matters, but interaction is the skill being practiced.

Where does Extempore fit?

Extempore now supports text responses in asynchronous group assessments, which means true interpersonal writing tasks alongside the speaking and writing assessments you already run. Students exchange written messages inside a structured task, you see every thread in one place, and you grade with your own rubric.

Even better, you don't have to build your first one. Our team just added a set of ready-made, language-agnostic chat tasks to the World Languages Commons, each one tagged for level and topic. Import one, swap in your target language, and you have an interpersonal writing task ready for tomorrow. Together with speaking tasks, they let you cover all three modes of communication in one platform.

Your students already know how to keep a chat alive in English. Give them a reason to do it in the language you teach, and watch the interpersonal skills you've been building out loud show up on the page.

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