Sociolinguist network analysis at European universities

Resumen

This research tries to show the sociolinguistic dimension of English as a foreign language in a virtual teaching context. Within the scope of the investigation, the e-learning project eHLEE (eHistory Learning Environment and Eva luation) was examined. Thanks to the fund of the European Commission , a European virtual university community was built between the students of Alcalá, Cork, Siegen, Bologna, Ha nnover, Pisa, Turku, Uppsala and the Finnish Virtual University of History. While students were studying how ideas of identity were formed, reinforced and modified in European history, social networks were established by using English as the course language. A signific ant linguistic corpus was provided by undergraduates' active participation in daily on -line forum discussions. This paper contrasts Spanish students' written discourse with ot her European students. The differences and similarities are shown and discussed in order to explore the use of English at European universities nowadays.