The NIFLAR project seeks to contribute to the European challenges of innovating andimproving foreign language education by enriching the educational context of bothforeign language (FL) learning and teacher training programs with the assistance ofsynchronous ICT tools. Within the project a blended learning system will be developedin an attempt to overcome limitations experienced and reported in current foreignlanguage practices at secondary and tertiary education levels: reduced possibilities tointeract in the target language (TL), lack of authenticity in communication processesenhanced in FL classrooms, inadequate and insufficient focus on the development ofintercultural communicative competence, low levels of achievement, lack of motivation,and on the teachers' side, insufficient knowledge and skills to promote InterculturalCommunicative Competence (ICC) and implement ICT tools that promote active andautonomous behaviours of learners. The NIFLAR project seeks to improve this situationby promoting blended learning, that is, a combination of face-to-face lessons where theteacher and classmates meet and engage in different pedagogic activities according totheir specific syllabus, and networked synchronous communication among peers (FLlearners and native peers) in dyadic settings according to the goals set by interactiontasks. These tasks will be elaborated by the partners for the different target groups (1.FL learners of Dutch, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian and 2. pre-service nativeteachers of the projects' TLs). Tasks will be easy to combine with notional-functional,communicative, or task based syllabi.Peers will use two innovative e-learning environments, video-web communication and3D Virtual Worlds, to communicate in the TL with each other. The first one facilitatessynchronous conversations where speech partners can talk and listen to each other,chat, share documents (flash documents, photos, audio (visual) fragments, power pointpresentations...) and collaborate in the synchronous writing process of differentdocuments while seeing each other. Within Virtual Worlds different contextual settingswill be created (a town with a school, a university, shops, cinema, markets, library, hotel,hospital, sport centre, etc.) where peers will engage in encounters and activities such assimulations and virtual role plays according to the goals set by context-specificinteraction tasks.