Abstract
This paper presents a study of video-mediated classroom interaction, a modality of teaching and learning which in the past two years has experienced a rapid growth as a consequence of the Coronavirus emergency. By analysing a collection of audio- and videorecorded virtual secondary school classes devoted to Italian as L2 in South Tyrol, we examine the way in which teachers and students cope with the challenges of not being physically co-present, and discuss how fundamental mechanisms of face-to-face classroom interaction – participants’ mutual orientation, turn-taking, and instructors’ actions like questions and evaluations – are partially modified in the online setting, making it more complex, for instructors, to sustain students’ active participation. Final reflexions are devoted to potential didactic implications of the findings.