Understanding telecollaboration through an analysis of intercultural discourse

Abstract

This study examines if and how collaboration and intercultural learning took place during telecollaboration by exploring the linguistic features of the discourse used by the participants, as well as the patterns and types of interactions between intercultural interlocutors. EFL students in Taiwan were paired up with pre-service teacher education students in the US for the project. The data collected included online forum entries written by participants from both sides after they read two articles and the end-of-project reports written by the Taiwanese participants. The findings of this study add to the small but increasing body of literature about online learning and collaborative behaviors. In particular, the linguistic-grounded examination of intercultural discourse adopted by this study echoes a previous assertion that such an approach could provide insights into the complex and multi-layered social interactions in telecollaboration. The new and unexpected findings about intercultural learning between Asian and US university students deserve further study.

Keywords:

• telecollaboration
• intercultural discourse
• EFL

Notes

1. Details about the package can be obtained from http://www.phpbb.com/

2. The US academic semester ended earlier than the Taiwanese one, so the US instructor did not have a chance to schedule a final report into the calendar.

3. A complete description of LIWC can be found at http://www.liwc.net/liwcdescription.php

4. Although there are five criteria of intercultural competence in Byram's model, the criteria of ‘ability to cope with living in a different culture’ is not applicable to the present study; therefore, the categories used for this study included: (i) interest in knowing other people's way of life and introducing one's own culture to others, (ii) ability to change perspective, (iii) knowledge about one's own and other's culture for intercultural communication, and (iv) knowledge about the intercultural communication process.

5. The Flesch/Flesch–Kincaid Readability Tests are readability tests designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. The Flesch-Kincaid grade level calculates the US grade level of a text sample based on sentence length and syllable count.

6. All the names are pseudonyms.