Title: E-Learning and the Development of Intercultural Competence
Journal: Language Learning & Technology, September 2006, Volume 10, Number 3
Author: Meei-ling Liaw, National Taichung University
http://llt.msu.edu/vol10num3/liaw/
Summary
This study aims to presents the findings of the efficacy of an online learning environment developed consist of articles on different cultures within the subjects to encourage EFL students’ intercultural competencies. Two e-referencing tools were made available in the system while students were reading and writing. Furthermore, an e-forum was created to help the students involved in communicating with speakers from the target language itself. There are no specific subjects in the research were stated except that the online learning environment was created for EFL students. The findings showed that all EFL participants were able to communicate fluently in the target language without much help from corpora-based e-referencing tools provided in the system. The usage of online dictionary decreased radically after the first two readings. The online concordancer, instead of being used for learning different kinds of cultural meaning on the levels of lexical, syntactic, and textual organization as originally intended, was used by the students to link to articles of similar topics for further explorations of culture and language learning opportunities. Despite some technical complications with the computers, the collaboration between the two groups of students was successful, as can be seen from the positive and complimentary comments from the participants. The students’ e-forum entries demonstrated four types of intercultural competences: (A) interest in knowing other people’s way of life and introducing one’s own culture to others, (B) ability to change perspective, (C) knowledge about one’s own and others’ culture for intercultural communication, and (D) knowledge about intercultural communication processes.
Reaction
In the first place, this research article was impressive in terms of the ideas because nowadays, the online learning is something that can help bolster the opportunities for students to interact in authentic way especially for EFL students who might have to wait for a long time to get a chance to speak to the real native speaker of the target language. Plus the teaching of culture is essential in the language leaning. By using the cross cultural factor as a stimulator to get the students motivated to learn as to encourage their interest in knowing about others’ culture might be helpful in language learning. Meanwhile, although the idea was a good thing, one part that spoils the research was there was no specific subject stated in the research article. This was something that might be confusing to some reader especially for reviewing. It can be improved by having the subjects stated and the arrangement of the article can be enhanced. In my point of view, this method is a stunning idea to get the students’ attention in learning the target language. The exchange of cultural knowledge among the participants involved will generate a kind of interesting surroundings in the learning process of the target language. Giving the spaces provided by the developer, the students will be able to communicate effectively with people from other culture and thus they have benefited from the learning process, which help them to be more open minded towards certain issues. From the platform also, it will surely help the participants to look at an issue in different view; means view of other people from other cultural. By means, it can contribute to the increasing value of cultural competence among the participants. I believe that this method is very suitable to be implemented in our country as a whole. Obviously that unity is very essential part in Malaysia, and this platform might help in generating unity among the participants involved, regarding that the citizen in this country are from different cultural background.
