Much of online learning has consisted of text-based communication, but as broadband connections improve and become more widespread, the promise of multimodal synchronous communication becomes a real possibility for many language teachers and learners and not just a dream. Being informed and prepared and developing skills that can be adapted and applied in different situations can help prevent the dream of multimodal teaching and learning from becoming a nightmare. The technical issues that arise may not always be the hindrance we might imagine but in fact may contribute to a stronger sense of social presence and contribute to learning outcomes. Polychronic communication (multicommunicating) is described as “managing multiple conversations at once within a given time period” (Turner & Tinsley, 2002). Multicommunicating is made possible by technologies which have features that allow interactions to be compartmentalised in a way that f2f or telephone cannot do and therefore allowing for flexibility in tempo. There are two features of multicommunicating are divided attention and delayed responses. (Turner &Tinsley 2008). However, other features are also present. Compartmentalisation means the text chat does not interrupt the oral conversation.