This article was downloaded by: [Dalhousie University]On: 04 October 2014, At: 06:58Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Computer Assisted Language LearningPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ncal20

Understanding telecollaborationthrough an analysis of interculturaldiscourseMeei-Ling Liaw a & Susan Bunn-Le Master ba Department of English , National Taichung University , TaichungCity, Taiwanb Sam Houston State University, Clear Creek Independent SchoolDistrict , Texas, USAPublished online: 05 Feb 2010.

To cite this article: Meei-Ling Liaw & Susan Bunn-Le Master (2010) Understanding telecollaborationthrough an analysis of intercultural discourse, Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23:1, 21-40,DOI: 10.1080/09588220903467301

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09588220903467301

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the“Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis,our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as tothe accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinionsand views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors,and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Contentshould not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sourcesof information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, actions, claims,proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoever orhowsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arisingout of the use of the Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms &Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

Understanding telecollaboration through an analysis of intercultural

discourse

Meei-Ling Liawa* and Susan Bunn-Le Masterb

aDepartment of English, National Taichung University, Taichung City, Taiwan; bSam HoustonState University, Clear Creek Independent School District, Texas, USA

This study examines if and how collaboration and intercultural learning tookplace during telecollaboration by exploring the linguistic features of the discourseused by the participants, as well as the patterns and types of interactions betweenintercultural interlocutors. EFL students in Taiwan were paired up with pre-service teacher education students in the US for the project. The data collectedincluded online forum entries written by participants from both sides after theyread two articles and the end-of-project reports written by the Taiwaneseparticipants. The findings of this study add to the small but increasing body ofliterature about online learning and collaborative behaviors. In particular, thelinguistic-grounded examination of intercultural discourse adopted by this studyechoes a previous assertion that such an approach could provide insights into thecomplex and multi-layered social interactions in telecollaboration. The new andunexpected findings about intercultural learning between Asian and US universitystudents deserve further study.

Keywords: telecollaboration; intercultural discourse; EFL

Introduction

As globalization increases, the need for understanding interculturality also growsproportionally. Disciplines including counseling psychology, the pedagogy of dramaand literature and ethnography have all enriched the discussion of interculturality.The concept, however, has developed mainly from traditions of foreign languageeducation (Alred, Byram, & Fleming, 2006). It is through linguistic ability thatpeople can be ‘intercultural speakers’ mediating between different cultures (Byram &Fleming, 1998). In language subjects, the use of the term ‘‘intercultural’’ reflects theview that foreign students need to gain insight both into their own and the foreignculture and be aware of the meeting of cultures that often takes place incommunication situations in the foreign language (Byram & Morgan, 1994;Kramsch, 1993). Ideally, foreign learners should become intercultural speakers ormediators who are able to engage with complex and multiple identities and to avoidthe stereotyping that accompanies the perception of someone through a singleidentity (Byram, Gribkova, & Starkey, 2002). Teachers should help learners to

*Corresponding author. Email: meeilingliaw@gmail.com

Computer Assisted Language Learning

Vol. 23, No. 1, February 2010, 21–40

ISSN 0958-8221 print/ISSN 1744-3210 online

� 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/09588220903467301

http://www.informaworld.com

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

reorganize their own complex cultural microcosmos and offer learners opportunitiesto develop skills to investigate cultural complexity and to promote cultural curiosity(Abrams, 2002).

Now that culture has gained a more central role in the foreign language curri-culum, language learners are described as ‘cultural mediators,’ ‘border-crossers’ or‘intercultural speakers’. The notions of ‘cultural learning,’ ‘intercultural competence’and ‘intercultural communication’ are present in policy initiatives on language learning.For example, the EU funded two language and culture training projects, Language,Culture, and Business (LCB) and Languages for Contract Administration andManagement in Construction (LANCAM), from 1999 to 2001, to provide multimediae-learning resources for professionals working in the European construction industry todevelop language skills and cultural awareness (Rogerson-Revell, 2003). The UnitedStates Department of Education International Studies and Research Grant funded thethree-year Penn State Foreign Language Telecollaborative Project (Belz, 2004). TheNational Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation jointly founded theSTAR.Legacy project and other technology-based initiatives for interculturalexchanges (Schwartz, Brophy, Lin, & Bransford, 1999; Schwartz, Lin, & Holmes,2003).

Globalization brings people of different nations closer together, especiallythrough a common medium such as the Internet. In the field of foreign languageeducation, the Internet provides teachers with a host of new tools and resources,including a vast amount of authentic materials in the target language and waysthat enable students to interact across geographic boundaries (O’Dowd, 2007).Furthermore, as Thorne (2008, p. 307) rightly points out, ‘Within language edu-cation, internet-mediated communication is no longer a proxy activity or practiceenvironment, but is itself the real thing – the medium through which we performsocial and professional roles and through which we engage in interpersonal andinformational activity.’

Internet-mediated communication has been used by foreign language teachersto create interactive learning environments in which students go beyond a check-list approach to cross-cultural knowledge and literacy (Belz, 2004; Felix 2002;Furstenberg, Levet, English &Maillet, 2001; Rogerson-Revell, 2003; Schwartz, Lin, &Holmes, 2003; Shawback & Terhune, 2002). Telecollaborative projects involving theuse of interactive Internet technologies are being implemented to link foreignand second language learners in institutionalized settings in different countries toengage in cost-effective exchanges for developing intercultural awareness and linguisticproficiency (Davis, Cho, & Hagenson, 2005; Kern, 2006). The many forms ofintercultural communications and telecollaborations mediated by Internet commu-nication tools create compelling, surprising and sometimes evenproblematic conditionsfor learning (Kern,Ware, &Warschauer, 2004; Pawan, Paulus, Yalcin, &Chang, 2003;Ware & Kramsch, 2005). Research in this area has revealed some information abouthow intercultural communication or miscommunication takes place and the trajectoryof interculturality development (Belz, 2003, 2004). Analyses of language uses inintercultural communication settings have shown that during interaction, participantsof different cultural, linguistic and socio-economic backgrounds would increasinglyconstitute themselves as a community, speak in a collective voice, converge on alinguistic style and concur on topics of conversation, the goals of the group and evenstrategies for achieving them (Cassel & Tversky, 2005). Other studies, however, foundthat discussions did not become interactive and collaborative simply because the

22 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

participants were put in touch via Internet-mediated communication (Pawan,Paulus, Yalcin, & Chang, 2003). Many contextual factors – including social andcognitive ones – as well as interaction patterns play important roles in the process andremain to be examined to gain insights into the complexity involved.

Review of studies on telecollaborative projects

In 1997, the Cultura Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities,initiated a program in which students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology inCambridge, US, could interact with the students at the Institut National desTelecommunications in Evry, France, via a network forum to collaborate onobserving, comparing and analyzing parallel materials from their respective cultures(Furstenberg, Levet, English, &Maillet, 2001). Even though the focus of Cultura is onthe mutual understanding of French and American cultures, it provides a basic andbroad methodology that can be applied to the mutual understanding of other culturesand nations. For example, Finkbeiner and Koplin (2002) worked with Dorothy Chunat the University of California, Santa Barbara, on conducting a virtual exchangeproject using the Cultura Project as a model for a group of in-service teachers inGermany who were enrolled in their seminars. Their analyses of the students’ cross-cases indicated increased differentiated understanding of cultures and a desire toextend knowledge about cultural customs, concepts and values.

The National Science Foundation and the Spencer Foundation jointly sponsoredthe design of STAR.Legacy to provide a three-dimensional virtual world forteaching students online (Lin & Schwartz, 2003; Schwarts, Lin, & Holmes, 2003).Findings of the project reveal that cross-cultural contact can be a way of exposingstudents and teachers to fresh models of educational values and practices andas a way of illuminating their own. It was concluded that technology ‘enablesmanageable cross-cultural exchanges that target specific learning goals for reflection’and ‘allows people to interact with a foreign culture while maintaining responsibilityto their local culture’ (Schwarts, Lin, & Holmes, 2003, p. 302).

The Penn State Foreign Language Telecollaborative Project is another projectdesigned to enhance the effects of technology-mediated language use on the foreignlanguage (FL) learning process and learning outcome among learners (Belz, 2004).With the project, the researcher examined how telecollaborative learning differedfrom conventional FL learning. In addition, a bilingual contrastive learner corpus,Telekorp, was created to provide learners with the opportunity to systematicallyreflect on their own L2 use on an ongoing basis throughout the course.

Students of French at Carnegie Mellon University, US and French learners atthe Open University, UK worked synchronously and asynchronously in onlineenvironments with native francophone students enrolled in distance education at theUniversite de Franche Comte, France (Hauck & Youngs, 2008). The results showedthat while the synchronous audio-conferencing environment used during theexchange enabled the participants to be in real-time contact with native speakersand other learners of French and English, it was in the asynchronous context that thestudents found more scope for developing closer relationships with their learningpartners.

The CANDLE Cultural E-Learning website was created for interculturalcommunication (Liaw, 2007). The learning environment contains three onlinecomputer-based support tools: a bilingual concordancer, a dictionary and discussion

Computer Assisted Language Learning 23

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

boards for intercultural communication. A study showed that of the two e-referencingtools, the online dictionary was more frequently used than the concordancer. Thestudents were generally satisfied with the web-based learning environment. Thestudents’ forum entries revealed increases in the length and sentence complexity aswell as reductions in grammatical errors. In addition, different types of interculturalawareness were developed during the intercultural exchanges.

The projects reviewed reported interesting findings and have contributed to ourunderstanding of the various implementation contexts of telecollaboration and howthey affected intercultural learning. The Cultura Project demonstrates howcomparing and contrasting cultural artifacts can help students to structure, interpretand reflect on their learning as they navigate through their experiences. The PennState Foreign Language Telecollaborative Project shows how instructors can helpraise their students’ awareness of culturally specific discourse type by noticing howpatterns of discourse affect their intercultural interactions (Belz & Vyatkina, 2005).The telecollaboration among Carnegie Mellon University, the Open Universityandthe Universite de Franche Comte reveals that the different modes of communicationtools enable different levels of connectivity and interactivity. CANDLE CultureE-Learning incorporated and experimented with e-referencing tools for onlineintercultural communication.

Nevertheless, our understanding of telecollaboration is still limited. First of all,as Belz (2004) points out, most studies have content-analyzed process data forevidence of development of intercultural competence but why or how particularpieces of data index development is not always clear. She thus further suggests usinglinguistically grounded interpretations of intercultural communication that presentdata in both sequence and aggregation. Second, we have yet to identify the con-textual factors, for example, types of communicative activities, the tools used forcommunicationand the respective ‘cultures of use’ (Thorne, 2006) that contribute tointercultural understanding. Kramsch and Thorne (2002) stressed that it is not onlythe particular linguistic choices that students make on a turn-by-turn basis in theironline discourse but also the collective conventions of a discourse community thatcontribute to intercultural understanding. In other words, both linguistic and‘alinguistic’ aspects of the development of intercultural competence in telecollabora-tion need to be carefully investigated so that instructional implications can bedrawn. In-depth examinations are needed for us to understand how individualand collective experiences influence the ways users engage in Internet-mediatedcommunication with consequential outcomes for both the processes and productsof language development (Thorne, 2003). Because telecollaboration is a form ofintercultural communication, investigation should entail research questions that takesocial as well as linguistic and cognitive factors and data sources into account (Belz,2004).

Significance of the study and research questions

Collaborative interactions are key elements in the success of interculturalcommunication and reflective learning online (Pawan, Paulus, Yalcin, & Chang,2003) and the linguistic structure of telecollaborative texts can provide informationon the development of intercultural competence (Belz, 2003, 2004). As such, thisstudy examines whether such collaboration took place during the exchanges amongparticipants and the patterns and types of interactions between intercultural

24 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

interlocutors by noting the linguistic features of the discourse of the participants.The research questions for the study are as follows:

(1) What were salient lexical features which provide evidence for/could beinterpreted as evidence of ‘intercultural’ discourse?

(2) Did collaborative interaction take place during intercultural correspondence?If so, in what ways?

(3) Did the students’ intercultural competence change because of participation inthe project (Byram, 2000)?

(4) How and why did collaboration help or not help the participating studentsdevelop intercultural competence?

Method

The website

The study was based on the use of a project website, CANDLE, as an environmentfor intercultural learning since its development in 2005. Each year, one or moreclasses of EFL students in central Taiwan are linked with university students in theUS via the CANDLE website for intercultural communication. Feedback on theusefulness of the website is collected at the end of each semester and the website isthen revised. This website conveniently served as a platform for collecting data forthis study (http://candle.ntcu.edu.tw/candle/c2).

Participants

In fall 2006, 33 freshman students majoring in English in a university in centralTaiwan were paired up with an equal number of pre-service teacher educationtrainees for the project. Intercultural communication with partners in the US wasmade part of the freshman English curriculum for this group of students. Writtenconsent was obtained from all participants of this group. The US participants weremostly bilingual/ESL education pre-service teachers, ranging in age from 18 to 45years old, studying at a university in Texas. Many of them decided to becometeachers after working in other professions or had gone back to school after raisingtheir children. At the time of the project implementation, their instructor waslooking for intercultural e-pals for them. The forums in this online interculturallearning environment therefore served as a timely ‘third space’ for the two groups ofstudents across the Pacific Ocean (Kramsch, 1993; Thorne, 2003). Verbal agreementswere obtained from the US participants that the data collected would be used forresearch purposes and for revising the web-based learning system.

Access to project websites and the online forum

O’Dowd (2003) identifies key characteristics of virtual changes that help to developlearners’ intercultural communicative competence. To ensure the inclusion of thesecharacteristics, the participants engaged in joint readings on topics related toTaiwanese culture. The readings served as a catalyst for dialogic questioning,responding and reflections. In order to provide a scaffold to initiate their onlinecommunication with increased mutual understanding, online forums were created by

Computer Assisted Language Learning 25

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

using an open source bulletin board package, phpBB.1 Asynchronous communica-tion was adopted because of the difficulties in finding a common time for bothgroups of participants to be online.

Procedures of implementation

The two articles for this project were selected from Taiwan Panorama, an officialmonthly magazine published by the Government Information Office of the Republicof China. Taiwan Panorama was deemed suitable for the project because of its in-depth reports on the lifestyles, society, economy and cultures of Taiwan. The FleaMarket Sociology and Love Online were selected because their lengths and levels ofdifficulty were appropriate for the Taiwanese participants.

To prepare the students for the exchanges, the instructor in Taiwan firstacquainted the participants with the design of the website during an orientationsession by explaining the functions of the discussion boards and how to access thereading materials. After that most of the reading and writing were done outside ofclass and the students could proceed at their own pace. At the end of the semester,the participants wrote a one-page report on their participative experience andsubmitted it to their instructor/researcher.

The pre-service education teachers in the US read the articles outside of class andwere given some time in class to respond to their e-pals. The university requires thateducation classes include technology and writing and this intercultural exchangeallowed the students to use the computers in the university computer lab.

Deciding on the time for the telecollaboration to be implemented was not an easytask, a challenge also noted by other researchers (Hauck, 2007; O’Dowd & Ritter,2006). Due to the short overlap between the Taiwanese and US academic calendars,the instructors of this study could only schedule the exchange for about six weekslasting from early October to mid-November.

Data collection and analysis

The data collected for this study included the forum entries that both groups ofparticipants wrote during the project as well as the short reports written by theTaiwanese participants2 at the end of the project. To answer the research questions,different types of analyses were employed.

First, linguistic interaction patterns of the two groups of participants wereanalyzed. In addition, since word frequency is considered a powerful tool inunderstanding the psychological and sociological profiles of individuals and groups(Pennebaker, Francis, & Booth, 2001), a text analysis software program wasemployed. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC), designed by Pennebakeret al., allows the analysis of written text on a word-by-word basis, calculating thepercentage of words in the text that match each of up to approximately 80 outputvariables.3 For this study, LIWC gave a profile of how the participants on each sideof the Pacific used the words in the different categories. In addition, a comparison ofthe words used over time was expected to shed light on the linguistic interactionpatterns between the two groups. This study particularly examined the use ofdifferent categories of pronouns (‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘you’), affective words, cognitive words(i.e., words that are used to show insightfulness, point out discrepancies, expresstentative thoughts and evaluate certainty) and social words (i.e., words that refer to

26 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

the process of communication and that make frequent references to ‘friends’, ‘family’and other people) because their uses have been found to be culturally related(Matsumoto, Yoo, & LeRoux, in press; Setlock, Fussell, & Neuwirth, 2004; Setlock,Quinones, & Fussell, 2007).

Third, a content analysis of the forum entries was performed to determine ifcollaborative interaction took place between intercultural partners. As in the studyby Pawan, Paulus, Yalcin, and Chang (2003), the modified version of Garrison,Anderson, and Archer’s (2001) Practical Inquiry Model was used. The model wascreated specifically to assess outcomes of collaboration in a higher education onlinecourse environment. The practical inquiry model includes four phases of criticalthinking and cognitive presence (Garrison et al., 2001). Table 1 summarizes thedetails of the model. For the analysis, speech segments were the units used for codingsince some messages contained several themes addressing different issues orquestions raised during the discussions (Henri & Rigault, 1996).

Table 1. Practical Inquiry Model devised by Garrison et al., 2001.

Descriptor Indicators Sociocognitive processes

Phase 1 Trigger events (Evocative)1.1 Recognizing the problem 1.1.1 Presenting background information that

culminates in a question1.2 Sense of puzzlement 1.2.1 Asking questions

1.2.2 Messages that take the discussion ina new direction

Phase 2 Exploration (Inquisitive)2.1 Divergence – within theonline community

2.1.1 Unsubstantiated contradictionof previous ideas

2.2 Information exchange 2.2.1 Personal narratives/descriptions/facts(not used as evidence to support aconclusion)

2.3 Suggestions forconsideration

2.3.1 Author explicitly characterizes messageas exploration; e.g., ‘Does that seem aboutright?’ Or ‘Am I way off the mark?’

2.4 Brainstorming 2.4.1 Adds to established points but does notsystematically defend/justify/developaddition

2.5 Leaps to conclusion 2.5.1 Offers unsupported opinionsPhase 3 Integration (tentative)

3.1 Convergence 3.1.1 Reference to previous message followedby substantiated agreement; e.g., ‘I agreebecause . . .’

3.1.2 Building on, adding to others’ ideas3.2 Convergence (tentativesolutions)

3.2.1 Justified, developed, defensible, yettentative hypotheses

3.3 Connecting ideas, synthesis 3.3.1 Integrating information from varioussources – textbooks, articles, personalexperience

3.4 Creating solutions 3.4.1 Explicit characterization of messageas a solution by participant

Phase 4 Resolution (Committed)4.1 Vicarious applicationto real world

4.1.1 None

4.2 Testing solutions 4.2.1 Coded4.3 Defending solutions

Computer Assisted Language Learning 27

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

Finally, the intercultural competence of the two groups was analyzed by applyingguidelines for the assessment of intercultural experience by Byram (2000).4 Theforum entries were read many times to find examples of different categories.

For the analyses of collaborative interaction and intercultural competence,this researcher and a doctoral student coded and analyzed all of the forum entriesto establish inter-rater reliability. The two coders first coded 20% of the data andthen got together to compare their results. After going over the differences andre-establishing agreements on the coding, they then separately reanalyzed all thedata. The final inter-rater agreement was 85.62%.

To answer the last research question, the final reports of the Taiwaneseparticipants were read and analyzed. The qualitative ‘emerging design’ approach(Lincoln & Guba, 1986) was used to identify the recurring themes that emerged inthe reports.

Findings

Linguistic profiles of the participants across the Pacific

The students in the US wrote more responses entries to both the first article and thesecond article than the Taiwanese students. In general, the US participants alsowrote longer responses than their Taiwanese counterparts. The Flesch-KincaidGrade Levels5 of the entries discussing the first article were 5.6 and 5.9 for theTaiwanese and the US participants, respectively. For the entries discussing thesecond article, the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Levels were 6.1 for both the Taiwanese andthe US students. Table 2 summarizes the number of entries, the number of wordcounts and words per sentence, as well as text complexity as measured by Flesch-Kincaid readability.

Since the use of pronouns, affective words, cognitive words and social words canyield information about cultural behaviors (Setlock, Fussell, & Neuwirth, 2004;Setlock, Quinones, & Fussell, 2007), the findings of the words used from thesecategories were particularly scrutinized. Table 3 summarizes the percentages of theuse of pronouns for Article 1 and Article 2 by both groups of participants.

The statistical analysis of the differences between the use of ‘I’ and ‘we’reveals that the participants used significantly higher numbers of ‘I’ for Article 1 thanfor Article 2 (Article 1 M ¼ 8.79, SD ¼ 3.22; Article 2 M ¼ 7.65, SD ¼ 3.46; F(1,128) ¼ 4.03, p 5 .05); the use of ‘we’ for the first article was also higher than for thesecond article (Article 1 M ¼ 0.71, SD ¼ 0.65; Article 2 M ¼ 1.17, SD ¼ 1.22;

Table 2. Summary of the numbers of word counts, words per sentence, and Flesch-Kincaidgrade level of the participants’ entries by entry and by nationality.

Article 1 Article 2

Taiwaneseparticipants

Americanparticipants Total

Taiwaneseparticipants

Americanparticipants Total

Entries 98 127 225 68 87 155WC 14580 18485 33065 9549 13273 22822WPS 23.18 29.77 24.11 29.96Flesch-Kincaidgrade level

5.6 5.9 6.1 6.1

28 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

F(1.128) ¼ 7.30, p 5 .01). In addition, there were significant differences in the use of‘I’ between countries. The Taiwanese students’ use of ‘I’ was significantly higher thanthat of the American students (Taiwanese studentsM ¼ 8.97, SD ¼ 3.54; US studentsM ¼ 7.48, SD ¼ 3.06; F(1, 128) ¼ 6.90, p 5 .05).

The Taiwanese students consistently used more affective words than their USpartners when discussing both Article 1 and Article 2. Only positive emotion words(e.g., happy, pretty, good) were found in the use of affective words. The use ofcognitive words (e.g., cause, know, ought) showed a reversed pattern with the USstudents using comparatively more of them than their Taiwanese counterpartsalthough the difference decreased with Article 2. The percentages of cognitive wordsused by Taiwanese students remained unchanged between Article 1 and Article 2.Table 4 summarizes the percentages of social process words, affective process wordsand cognitive process words used by the two groups of participants.

The statistical analysis of the differences in the use of social words, affect wordsand cognitive words by article all showed significant results. The participants usedsignificantly more social process words (Article 1 M ¼ 1.99, SD ¼ 2.68; Article2 M ¼ 15.58, SD ¼ 3.89; F(1, 128) ¼ 37.82, p 5 .01), affective words (Article1 M ¼ 5.60, SD ¼ 1.8; Article 2 M ¼ 7.37, SD ¼ 2.87; F(1, 128) ¼ 19.31, p 5 .01)

Table 3. Participants’ use of the pronouns ‘I’, ‘we’ and ‘you’ (%).

Article 1 Article 2

CategoryTaiwanesestudents

Americanstudents

Taiwanesestudents

Americanstudents

I 2.89 2.61 2.41 2.26we 0.02 0.01 0 0.02you 0 0 0.01 0Total 2.9 2.62 2.42 2.28

Note: LIWC results presented as percentage of total words.

Table 4. Summary of the social process words, affective process words, and cognitive processwords used by the participants (%).

Article 1 Article 2

CategoryTaiwanesestudents

Americanstudents

Taiwanesestudents

Americanstudents

Social processesFamily (daughter,husband, aunt)

Humans (adult, baby, boy)

0.14 0.11 0.35 0.11

Affective processesPositive emotion(love, nice, sweet)

0.07 0.05 0.09 0.07

Cognitive processesDiscrepancy (should,would, could)

Tentative (maybe, perhaps, guess)Exclusive (but, without, exclude)

0.12 0.22 0.12 0.19

Note: LIWC results presented as percentage of total words.

Computer Assisted Language Learning 29

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

and cognitive process words (Article 1 M ¼ 14.21, SD ¼ 3.64; Article 2 M ¼ 17.67,SD ¼ 3.97; F(1, 128) ¼ 27.56, p 5 .01) for Article 2 than for Article 1. In addition,Taiwanese participants’ use of affective words was significantly higher than that ofUS participants (Taiwan M ¼ 7.24, SD ¼ 2.78; US M ¼ 5.74, SD ¼ 2.10; F(1,128) ¼ 13.85, p 5 .01).

Collaborative interaction between the two groups

An analysis of the collaborative interaction showed that they gravitated towardPhase 2 (Exploration; Article 1–25%, Article 2–23.2%) and Phase 1 (Triggeringevents; Article 1–71.7%, Article 2–68.5%), with a few Phase 3 (Integration; Article1–3.4%, Article 2–7.6%) and only 2 Phase 4 (Resolution; Article 1–0%, Article 2–1%). Table 5 shows the numbers and percentages of units in different phases of thePractical Inquiry Model.

The high concentration of Phase 2 interaction (Exploration) reveals that ingeneral the participants mainly engaged in information exchanges and brainstormingideas related to the articles they read or the topics discussed in previous messages.They did not question or challenge each other’s viewpoints. Only some Phase 3(Integration) units demonstrated the effort by the participants to build on theinformation from previous messages to construct and negotiate new meanings fromthe discussion.

A comparison between the patterns of the two groups shows that the groups werealmost identical in their participation: both groups of students spent most of theircommunication time exchanging information, engaging in personal narratives,describing events and exploring each other’s thoughts.

The followings are excerpts of typical exchanges between the partners withmostly Phase 2 units. It was only at the end of the Taiwanese student’s entry thatshe asked her US partner to correct her English and thus triggered a new topic fordiscussion (Phase I):

(Phase 2 Exploration) I have just finished reading the Flea Market Sociology article.Ironically my step-dad has a booth at Traders Village (which is an outdoor flea market).He makes jewelry i.e. necklaces, earrings, bracelets, rings, etc. I even have a board of thejewelry I make. There are times when a customer tries to bargain for a cheaper price. Sowhen I am not there the price tag has an inventory number but it is actually is the lowestprice that I will sell the jewelry for. Most people don’t realize that some of the stones weuse are expensive to buy even though we get whole sale prices . . ..I look forward tohearing what you think about the article. If you have any questions feel free to ask. Talkto you later. (Beth,6 US)

Table 5. Participants’ collaborative interaction.

Article 1 Article 2

Phase 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4

Taiwanese students N 34 107 5 0 18 76 11 2% 23.3 73.3 3.4 0 17 71.7 10.4 1

American students N 48 126 6 0 43 97 7 0% 26.7 70 3.4 0 29.3 66 4.8 0

Total N 82 133 11 0 61 173 18 2Average % 25 71.7 3.4 0 23.2 68.5 7.6 1

30 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

(Phase 2 Exploration) In Taiwan, there are not often to see flea markets, which onlytake place in charity activities. The money they get often donates to some organizationsor there community.. . . If you want buy things which are very cheap, you can go tonight market or some commercial bazaars where are always crowded and many venderthere. We always haggle sessions with them, the reasons as follows. First, some ofbusinessmen always high up the price actually they earn lot money so you have tobargain with them. Secondly, if you are a businessman the price is too low you canchoose not to sell the merchandise . . .. (Phase 1 Triggering) I would like that you couldpoint out the wrong grammar or some words that are not appropriate to use in myarticle. If you are not willing to do that, it’s ok. (Ula, Taiwan)

Among the forum entries, about 11% of the entry units reached Phase 3(Convergence), meaning moving the discussion from sharing new information tomaking connections between ideas shared and creating a synthesis of newunderstanding. An example can be seen in the following exchange:

(Phase 2 Exploration) I have been using the internet for awhile. I use it for research andemail mostly. When I was younger, I went into chat rooms and made friends withpeople, but as I have gotten older I don’t do that anymore. There are some people todaythat are really weird and stalk people or hurt the people that they talk to. I really don’twant any part of that, so I just talk to the people I know. . . . (Phase 1 Triggering) Doyou think that you can find true love online? (Terry, US)

(Phase 3 Convergent) I have seen your response about love online. I have sameviewpoint as you. I think it is hard to fall in love with someone who you have never seen.Maybe he/she forges the personal introduction.. . . In the net, people who want to makefriends always focus on appearance. They always want photo at the first . . . if a nicelooking girl, they will be eager to talk to you, and date with you. On converse, they willbe indifferent. (Phase 1 Triggering) So cruel, isn’t it? It is not fair to judge a person bytheir appearance . . .. (Phase 3 Convergent) The net is a great way to meet people justyou and me. (Vicky, Taiwan)

Only a few entries contain Phase 4 (Resolution) interactions. In Phase 4,interlocutors find, test and implement a solution to problems presented in thetriggering phase. In the following exchange, the US participant describes her positivethoughts about online dating by providing stories about her friends. Her Taiwanesepartner, although aware of their different viewpoints on the matter, first praises herpartner’s positive attitude toward life and mentions how much she can learn fromher. She then offers her opinions about not trusting online romances. However, inorder not to sound contradictory or rude, she tells her US partner that what herfather said caused her to think this way. This was a move to provide a solution to theproblem and later her American partner agreed with her:

(Phase 2 Exploration) I think that is not a bad thing because that is a good way to meetnew friends. You and me, we are becoming friends, and how? On this ‘online activity’, atleast that how I consider it. (Phase 1 Triggering) But to my disagreement, there aremany people that don’t use it appropriately. For example some people like to havefriends on-line then date with them; it is okay if they really have good feelings towardseach other but if they just want to play around that is really bad. (Phase 2 Exploration) Ihave a friend who made a friend from Colombia. They were talking each other only on-line and one day the girl from Colombia came to the United States, and met my friendhere in Conroe, Texas. They are good friend until now.. . .. (Christine, US)

(Phase 1 Triggering) I’m glad to read your opinion about love online, and I think thatyou have a very positive attitude toward making friends online, after reading yourpoints, I learn a lot from it, and I can’t wait learning from you more in coming times. Byreading the thoughts you wrote I guess you are a person full of knowledge because ofyour ideas about the topic is unique. (Phase 2 Exploration) And I have some sense.

Computer Assisted Language Learning 31

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

In my opinion, I am afraid of meeting someone I’ve never seen, especially online’sfriend. (Phase 4 Resolution) My father told me never put myself in danger, as the publicsecurity in Taiwan isn’t well enough. On the other hand, I am a girl so I will on noaccount to do this, maybe in other people’ eyes that I am too conservative in mygeneration. (Jane, Taiwan)

Participants’ intercultural competence

Among the discussion entries for Article 1, Category C was the biggest category witha percentage of 63.6%. For the discussion of Article 2, Category C again had themost entries and the percentage was as high as 94.2%. The results are summarized inTable 6.

The following is a typical exchange based on Article 1. The communication wasfriendly, warm and reciprocal. In their back-and-forth exchanges, ample personal aswell as cultural information was exchanged. Both entries showed the characteristicsof Category C:

How are you? Everything is great here.. . . In my free time . . . I like to read and listen tomusic. I also spend lots of time with my fiance . . . we just recently got engaged and wewill get married soon. So is Curtis your real name? . . . I read the article on fleamarkets . . .. I personally like flea markets and have to agree with the author when hestates that Caucasian people don’t ever try to talk the price down. When I go, I just paywhat the price tag says to pay.. . . Most of the time, the people are very friendly butsometimes the vendors can be out right grumpy . . . those are the ones I don’t buy from!!(Amber, US)

I want to say congratulation to you. You will be the bride next year. I think you must bevery happy and a little exciting. Curtis is my English name . . .. my name was given bymy high school classmate. He was born in America, and lived there for three years. Iasked him to give me an English name which is rare in Taiwan.. . . Then I would like totell you my opinion about flea market. I agree that Chinese is very good at talking theprice down. When I was a child, I went to tradition market in Taiwan with my mom.Then I saw her haggled with vendor just for a fish. And she was successful at the end.But just for me, I don’t haggle very usual . . .. If you want to know something aboutTaiwan or Chinese culture, welcome to ask me . . .. And I hope that I can ask somethingabout your culture, can I? I would like to know something about thanksgiving . . .. It isnice to talk to you. Hope to hear back from you soon. (Curtis, Taiwan)

Since the partners had already passed the ‘getting-to-know-each-other’ stage,when they discussed the second article, Love Online, they went directly to the topic.Personal as well as cultural information was interwoven in the thoughts they sharedwith each other, also demonstrating Category C characteristics:

I don’t known if you have read the article about Love Online? It is a very appeal topic tous especially the person in our age . . .. Chatting on the internet has become more and

Table 6. Participants’ intercultural competence as analyzed by Byram’s model.

Article 1 Article 2

Intercultural Competence Category A B C D A B C D

Taiwanese students 33 1 63 0 1 0 67 0American students 47 0 80 0 7 1 79 1Total 80 1 143 0 8 1 146 1Percentage 35.6 .4 63.6 0 5.2 .6 94.2 .6

32 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

more popular in our daily life. It is very common that everyone have friends online inTaiwan’s University students, is person in USA the same? But my parents don’t agreewith me have an e-pal, because they think it is dangerous.. . . I know what my parentscare about, so I follow theirs rules.. . .. In Chinese, filial piety is very important, youcan disagree the thinking of your parents but you can’t conflict with them straight.. . .What’s your opinion? I really want to know and I would like you can share it with mesoon. (Sunny, Taiwan)

Love online is controversial. It can be dangerous to give out so much information on theinternet . . .. I respect that you do understand your parents point of view. So manyyoung people here do not listen to their parents and end up with the consequences thattheir parents were trying to avoid. On the other hand I had a friend get married justfriday to someone she met online. Not only did she met online, she even came fromAustralia to the United States to met, and to live. So I have heard both sides of onlinemeeting. (Rebecca, US)

Taiwanese participants’ reflections

The end-of-semester reports by the Taiwanese EFL students covered a variety oftopics:

(1) descriptions of their intercultural partners,(2) their initial apprehension about writing in English to their e-pals,(3) what they learned from the intercultural correspondence, and(4) an evaluation of the experience.

When describing their US partners, they especially mentioned their names andages. Concern about whether their own English language ability was sufficient tomeet the task was also an important issue; some of them asked their partners tocorrect their English but almost all of them reported no difficulties as they continuedwriting. They also expressed that they gained confidence in using English tocommunicate. All of the students valued the experience and some wanted to continueto write to their partners even after the project had ended.

All of the students thought the activity was very helpful. The benefits werethreefold: they learned about the lives and thoughts of their partners firsthand, theypracticed using English for real communication and they gained friendship. They feltthat their time was well spent and wanted to continue to write to their partners:

I like to learn the Western culture and English by this way. It is very different fromlearning English in senior high or junior high school. Before I enter university, the way Ilearned English was test and test, reading a lot of textbooks of grammar andvocabulary, which was all I have to do for set my English foundation. However, bystudying a lot, I didn’t have time and place to use them in my life. Now it is different,after entering university is it just like all the dreams come true. By having e-pals online Ican learn a lot of the customs and also improve my communication ability. Therefore, Iwant to continue writing to my e-pal on a personal basis. After all, what I learned mostfrom this experience is that English is really becoming part of my life. (Emily, Taiwan)

Discussion and conclusions

The discourse profiles of the two groups of participants

Although the findings show that the Taiwanese participants wrote fewer and shorterentries than their US counterparts, the readability levels of the Taiwanese students’

Computer Assisted Language Learning 33

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

writings were not considerably lower than that of the US students. It could havebeen that both sides were trying their best to fit in to the situation: the Taiwanesestudents strived to put their ‘best foot forward’ while the US students wroteaccording to what they felt was appropriate. As they proceeded to the second article,both groups wrote more and longer entries and the readability levels also increased.While this may not be interpreted as an improvement in Taiwanese students’ Englishlanguage proficiency, it could be reasonably seen as a sign of increased interest in thecross-cultural discussion.

In this study, the use of the pronouns ‘I’ and ‘we’ in the forum entries wasparticularly scrutinized because pronouns are thought to be indicative of a person’slevel of focus on involvement with others (Pennebaker, Mehl, et al., 2003). Researchalso suggests that the use of ‘we’ is associated with feelings of group identity and ‘I’ isan indicator of self-identity (Cassell, Huffaker, Tversky, & Ferriman, 2005). Thisstudy reveals that American participants used ‘we’ slightly more often than theirTaiwanese partners (though this was not statistically significant) and Taiwanesestudents used significantly higher percentages of ‘I’ than their US partners andseldom used ‘we.’ This is quite interesting to note since it contradicts the generalobservation that people of Eastern cultures identify themselves more as members ofa collective than as individuals (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Setlock, Fussell, &Neuwirth, 2004). This group of Taiwanese students unexpectedly focused theinteractions with their US counterparts on a personal level. The more frequent use of‘we’ by the US participants could be seen as an inclination of this group to view theonline communication as a process of partnership building, but it would bepresumptuous to conclude that Taiwanese students did not make, or made less of, aneffort to do so. A closer look at the use of the pronoun ‘I’ may provide a betterpicture. The analysis shows that both groups of students used ‘I’ significantly lessoften when discussing the second article than the first article. While this might havehad something to do with the topic of the article, it could also have been a lesseningemphasis on individual identity and increased efforts to form partnerships.

This effort became even more evident after further examination of how the twogroups employed social process words. Not only was the number of social wordsused by the Taiwanese students higher than that used by US students, it doubled inpercentage when Article 2 was discussed. This indicates that the Taiwanese studentsdid make an effort to connect with their US partners, and this effort increased as theycontinued their online exchanges. This also echoes the earlier finding on the use of ‘I’showing that Taiwanese students strived to connect with their US partners onindividual and interpersonal levels.

The affective process words used by the participants support the strengthenedconnections between the two groups as well. Furthermore, they demonstrate thegrowing interest of the Taiwanese students in their US partners. The Taiwanesestudents used more affective words than their US partners, and the percentageincreased significantly as they moved into the discussion of the second article. All ofthe affective words used by the participants expressed positive emotions. Accordingto Matsumoto, Yoo, and LeRoux (in press), emotions play an important role inintercultural communication since the ability to regulate emotion is one of thekeys to effective intercultural communication and adjustment. The positive emotionsdemonstrated in the process of telecollaboration could have smoothed thecommunication and contributed to the success of the project and the participants’personal growth.

34 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

As for the cognitive process words, the participants used significantly more ofthem in the discussions related to Article 2 than Article 1. This shows deepenedcognitive processes involved in the participants’ exchanges of thoughts as thecommunication continued. The US participants did use more language involv-ing cognitive processes than the Taiwanese participants. Although the higher useof cognitive words could mean more efforts were made to assert beliefs andformulate ideas (Cassell, et al., 2005) as well as to demonstrate possible cognitive oremotional uncertainty (Pennebaker & Francis, 1996), it could also have been due tothe higher levels of English language proficiency of the US students. A closer lookrevealed that, among the cognitive words, both groups used more discrepancy words(i.e., should, would, could) and tentative words (i.e., maybe, perhaps, guess) that arenot in the powerful language-use category (i.e., certainty and inhibition words). Thismakes the language proficiency difference between the two groups a more plausibleexplanation.

Collaborative interaction

The findings show that the majority of the entries were exchanges of information andexploration of issues brought up in previous messages rather than challenges orquestionings of others’ viewpoints. Even the very few disagreements between pairswere handled carefully and tactfully, showing a clear sense of audience and a sincereintention to maintain a good relationship. This collaborative interaction pattern isconsistent with the findings from the LIWC analysis output, in which participantsrelated to each other on interpersonal levels and had positive attitudes toward theinteraction.

Intercultural competence

The intercultural competence of the participants shows that there were shifts in thecompetence categories as students proceeded with the online communication.When both groups of participants started to read the articles and write to eachother, they inquired about the other person’s ways of life and reciprocated byintroducing their own. After the dialogues got started, most of the discussionmoved on to elaborated descriptions of how they and the people they knowbargain and the reasons behind the behavior. The sustained correspondencesdemonstrated the participants’ knowledge about their own and the other’s culturefor intercultural communication (Category C). During the discussion of Article 1,indications of disagreement or changes of opinion were few (Category B). Therewas neither the chance nor the need for the participants to show knowledge orcapacity to bridge intercultural communication gaps (Category D). As for thediscussion of Article 2, the interactions showed a different pattern. The participantsno longer inquired about each other’s ways of life but went directly to the topic ofthe article. They expressed their views on finding love over the Internet withsupporting stories about the people they knew or reports that they had read. Mostof the entries were of Category C. Again, the partners hardly ever directlydisagreed with each other and there was no need for changing perspectives orovercoming miscommunications.

Comparing the findings between the students’ discussion entries of Article 1and Article 2, we can see a change in the intercultural competence levels, mainly

Computer Assisted Language Learning 35

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

shown in a decrease of Category A entries and an increase of Category C entries.The interaction moved from exchanging personal information to their views ontopics presented in the articles they had read. They took turns expressing themselves,and the interaction was ongoing and well sustained by considerable detail. Hardlyany disagreement occurred between conversational pairs. Although only a fewinstances of Category D intercultural competence were identified, this resultcoincides with the findings from LIWC and the Critical Inquiry Model.

Students’ responses to the project

Overall, it appears to have been a very worthwhile experience for all of theTaiwanese students who participated in the project. They enjoyed learning about thelives of their partners and their views on the various topics presented in the articles.They were happy about the opportunity to learn about US culture and shared theirown thoughts and beliefs with their US e-pals. They saw participation in the onlinecommunication as a great opportunity to use English for real communication andgained confidence in their own English language competence. Most importantly,they found friendship across the Pacific without having to travel.

To conclude, this study set out to answer four research questions and the findingsanswered all of them. The lexical-grammatical features of the intercultural discourseof the participants were identified. Within the framework of the project, the parti-cipants’ intercultural communication was interactive and interpersonal. The use ofpronouns, social words, affective words and cognitive words showed that positiverapport between partners grew progressively. An analysis of the collaborativeinteraction between e-partners with the Critical Inquiry Model tells a similar story.Interestingly, most of the students found common views and beliefs about the topicsthey discussed. When the few disagreements arose, the participants were polite andrespectful. Thus, without critically questioning their partners or engaging in heateddebates, they were still able to express and exchange their own opinions. As forintercultural competence, the participants started by showing interest in each other’sculture and went on to describing their own culture with detailed descriptionsabout their friends, family and school lives. Both groups of students clearly displayedtheir ability to engage in intercultural communication and truly enjoyed it. Theirintercultural competence deepened as they continued with the online communica-tion. The Taiwanese students’ reports showed that they consider the project to havehelped them grow interculturally, linguistically and interpersonally.

Cassell and Tversky (2005) point out that the literature is scant on the topic ofhow language functions in cross-cultural communities online. This is particularlytrue in regard to intercultural communication between American and East Asianparticipants. The findings of this study add to the body of literature and revealinteresting new information. Ma (1996) tested propositions about culture andcomputer-mediated communication with American and Asian university studentswho had participated in a relay chat system. He found that both East Asians andAmericans were more direct in CMC than in face-to-face communication.

There was also a discrepancy in self-perceptions among the groups. Even thoughEast Asians thought of themselves as being direct online, Americans still foundthem polite and reserved. The findings from this study suggest that both Taiwaneseand American participants were polite. The reason could have been that thetelecollaborative partners in this study were exposed to rules of interaction they had

36 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

not yet mastered and consequently had to cope with mutual vulnerability of face(Brown & Levinson, 1978).

One other interesting finding of this study is that Taiwanese students, differentfrom what was generally believed, did not particularly identify themselves asmembers of a group but felt comfortable in presenting their own views as individualsand made efforts to connect with their e-partners on personal levels. According toByram et al. (2005), successful intercultural communication is based on perceivingthe interlocutor as an individual whose qualities are to be discovered. Interculturalcommunication should also be based on respect for individuals and the equality ofhuman rights as is the democratic basis for social interaction. The Taiwaneseparticipants’ ability to interact with their US partners on individual and personalbases may have contributed to the positive outcome of the project. Additionally, thisfinding may also be in line with the notion that online ‘learning cultures’ arenegotiated and thus emerge in context rather than being inherited (Goodfellow,2008; Reeder, Macfadyen, Roche, & Chase, 2004; Thorne, 2003).

Finally, as internet-mediated communication continues to spread, there areincreasing unpredictable as well as diverse configurations of interactants comingtogether in online networks. This study is therefore limited in its scope by lookinginto the interaction between only two cultural groups. In the future, ‘postnational’online education as well as research initiatives that move toward a more genuinelyglobal form of social transformation will need to be made to cope with this escalatingunpredictability (Goodfellow, 2008).

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.php4. 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’sway 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 indicatecomprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. TheFlesch-Kincaid grade level calculates the US grade level of a text sample based on sentencelength and syllable count.

6. All the names are pseudonyms.

Notes on contributors

Dr Meei-Ling Liaw is professor of English at National Taichung University. She has taughtreading and second language acquisition in the US and EFL in Taiwan. Her principle teachingand research interests include internet-mediated intercultural communication, reading andteacher education. She has published in Reading Research and Instruction, Reading Horizons,Foreign Language Annals, Systems, Language Learning and Technology and ReCALL. She ison the editorial board of Language Learning and Technology.

Dr Susan Bunn-Le Master has taught from kindergarten to 12th grade in public school andundergraduate and master’s classes at the university level. She has taught reading, giftededucation and second language acquisition classes from children to adults. Dr Bunn taughtESL methodology and multicultural education classes at Sam Houston State University inTexas. She has given many workshops in teacher education and presented at professionalconferences in her 32 years as an educator.

Computer Assisted Language Learning 37

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

References

Abrams, Z.I. (2002). Surfing to cross-cultural awareness: Using Internet-mediated projects toexplore cultural stereotypes. Foreign Language Annals, 35(2), 141–160.

Alred, G., Byram, M., & Fleming, M. (2006). Education for intercultural citizenship: Conceptsand comparisons. Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters.

Belz, J. (2003). Linguistic perspectives on the development of intercultural competence intelecollaboration. Language Learning & Technology, 7(2), 68–117.

Belz, J. (2004). Telecollaborative language study: A personal overview of praxis and research.Selected papers from the 2004 NFLRC Symposium: Distance education, distributed learning,and language instruction. July 27–30, 2004 at the University of Hawai’i National ForeignLanguage Resource Center. Retrieved August 24, 2008 from http://www.nflrc.hawaii.edu/networks/nw44/belz.htm

Belz, J., & Vyatkina, N. (2005). Learner corpus analysis and the development of L2 pragmaticcompetence in networked intercultural language study: The case of German modalparticles. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 62(1), 17–48.

Brown, P., & Levinson, S.C. (1978). Politeness: Some universals in language usage. Cambridge:Cambridge University Press.

Byram, M. (2000). Assessing intercultural competence in language teaching. Sprogforum,18(6), 8–13. Retrieved November 18, 2008 from http://inet.dpb.dpu.dk/infodok/sprogforum/Espr18/byram.html

Byram, M., & Fleming, M. (1998). Language learning in intercultural perspective: Approachesthrough drama and ethnography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Byram, M., Gribkova, B., & Starkey, H. (2002). Developing the intercultural dimension inlanguage teaching: A practical instruction for teachers. Retrieved October 15, 2008 fromhttp://www.coe.int/t/dg4/linguistic/Source/Guide_dimintercult_EN.pdf

Byram, M., & Morgan, C. (1994). Teaching-and-learning language-and-culture. Clevedon:Multilingual Matters.

Cassell, J., Huffaker, D., Tversky, D., & Ferriman, K. (2005). How to win a world election:Emergent leadership in an international online community. Proceedings of Communitiesand Technologies 2005, June 13–16, 2005,Milan, Italy. The Hague: Kluwer Academic Press.

Cassell, J., & Tversky, D. (2005). The language of online intercultural community formation.Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(2), article 2. Retrieved October 22,2008, from http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol10/issue2/cassell.html

Davis, N., Cho, M., & Hagenson, L. (2005). Intercultural competence and the role oftechnology in teacher education. Contemporary Issues in Technology and TeacherEducation, 4(4), 384–394.

Felix, U. (2002). The web as a vehicle for constructivist approaches in language teaching.ReCALL, 14(1), 2–15.

Finkbeiner, C., & Koplin, C. (2002). A cooperative approach for facilitating interculturaleducation. Reading Online, 6(3), retrieved October 6, 2005 from http://www.readingonline.org/newliteracies/finkbeiner

Furstenberg, G., Levet, S., English, K., &Maillet, K. (2001). Giving a virtual voice to the silentlanguage of culture: The Cultura project. Language Learning & Technology, 5(1), 55–102.

Garrison, R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2001). Critical thinking, cognitive presence andcomputer conferencing in distance education. American Journal of Distance Education,15(1), 7–23.

Goodfellow, R. (2008). New directions in research into learning cultures in online education.Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Networked Learning (pp. 553–559).Retrieved June 3, 2009 from http://www.networkedlearningconference.org.uk/past/nlc2008/abstracts/PDFs/GoodfellowIntro_552.pdf

Hauck, M. (2007). Critical success factors in a TRIDEM exchange. ReCALL, 19(2), 202–223.Hauck, M., & Youngs, B.L. (2008). Telecollaboration in multimodal environments: The

impact on task design and learner interaction. Computer Assisted Language Learning,21(2), 87–124.

Henri, F., & Rigault, C. (1996). Collaborative distance education and computer conferencing.In T.T. Liao (Ed.), Advanced educational technology: Research issues and future potential(pp. 45–76). Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

38 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

Kern, R. (2006). Perspectives on technology in learning and teaching. TESOL Quarterly,40(1), 183–210.

Kern, R., Ware, P., & Warschauer, M. (2004). Cross frontiers: New directions in onlinepedagogy and research. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 243–260.

Kramsch, C. (1993). Context and culture in language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Kramsch, C., & Thorne, S. (2002). Foreign language learning as global communicative

practice. In D. Cameron & D. Block (Eds.), Globalization and language teaching (pp. 83–100). New York: Routledge.

Liaw, M-L. (2007). Constructing a ‘third space’ for EFL learners: Where language andcultures meet. ReCALL, 19(2), 224–241.

Lin, X.D., & Schwartz, D.L. (2003). Reflection at the crossroads of culture.Mind, Culture, andActivity, 10, 9–26.

Lincoln, Y.S., & Guba, E.G. (1986). Naturalistic inquiry. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications.Ma, R. (1996). Computer-mediated conversations as a new dimension of intercultural

communication between East Asian and North American college students. In S.C. Herring(Ed.), Computer-mediated communication: Linguistic, social and cross-cultural perspectives(pp. 173–186). Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

Markus, H.R., & Kitayama, S. (1991). Culture and the self: Implications for cognition,emotion, and motivation. Psychological Review, 20, 568–579.

Matsumoto, D., Yoo, S.H., & LeRoux, J.A. (in press). Emotion and intercultural adjustment.In H. Kotthoff & H. Spencer-Oatley (Eds.), Handbook of applied linguistics, volume 7:Intercultural communication. Mouton – de Gruyter Publishers.

O’Dowd, R. (2003). Understanding the ‘‘other side’’: Intercultural learning in a Spanish-English e-mail exchange. Language Learning and Technology, 7(2), 118–144. RetrievedOctober 11, 2006 from http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/odowd/

O’Dowd, R. (Ed.) (2007). Online intercultural exchange: An introduction for foreign languageteachers. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

O’Dowd, R., & Ritter, M. (2006). Understanding and working with ‘‘failed communication’’in telecollaborative exchanges. CALICO Journal, 61(2), 623–642.

Pawan, F., Paulus, T.M., Yalcin, S., & Chang, C.-F. (2003). Online learning: Patterns ofengagement and interaction among in-service teachers. Language Learning andTechnology, 7(3), 119–140. Retrieved March 11, 2007, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num3/pawan/

Pennebaker, J., & Francis, M. (1996). Cognitive, emotional, and language processes indisclosure. Cognition and Emotion, 10, 601–626.

Pennebaker, J., Francis, M., & Booth, R. (2001). Linguistic inquiry and word count: LIWC2001. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum Publishers.

Pennebaker, J.W., Mehl, M.R., & Niederhoffer, K. (2003). Psychological aspects of naturallanguage use: Our words, our selves. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 547–577.

Reeder, K.L., Macfadyen, L.P., Roche, J., & Chase, M. (2004). Negotiating cultures incyberspace: participating patterns and problematics. Language Learning and Technol-ogy, 8(2), 88–105. Retrieved July 7, 2009, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol8num2/pdf/reeder.pdf

Rogerson-Revell, P. (2003). Developing a cultural syllabus for business language e-learningmaterials. ReCALL, 15(2), 155–169.

Schwarts, D., Lin, X., & Holmes, J. (2003). Technologies for learning from interculturalreflections. Intercultural Education, 14(3), 291–306.

Schwartz, D., Brophy, S., Lin, X., & Bransford, J. (1999). Software for managing complexlearning: Examples from an educational psychology course. Educational TechnologyResearch & Development, 47, 39–59.

Setlock, S.D., Fussell, S.R., & Neuwirth, C. (2004). Taking it out of context: Collaboratingwithin and across cultures in face-to-face settings and via instant messaging. CSCW 2004,November 6–10, 2004, Chicago, IL, USA.

Setlock, S.D., Quinones, P.-A., & Fussell, S.R. (2007). Does culture interact with mediarichness? The effects of audio vs. video conferencing on Chinese and American Dyads.Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. RetrievedOctober 22, 2008, from http://www.cs.cmu.edu/*sfussell/pubs/Manuscripts/Setlock_HICSS07.pdf

Computer Assisted Language Learning 39

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014

Shawback, M.J., & Terhune, N.M. (2002). Online interactive courseware: Using movies topromote cultural understanding in a CALL environment. ReCALL, 14(1), 85–95.

Thorne, S.L. (2003). Artifacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication. LanguageLearning and Technology, 7(2), 38–67. Retrieved October 11, 2006, from http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num2/odowd/

Thorne, S.L. (2006). Pedagogical and Praxiological Lessons from Internet-MediatedIntercultural Foreign Language Education Research. In J.A. Belz & S.L. Thorne (Eds.),Internet-mediated intercultural foreign language education (pp. 2–30). Boston, MA: Heinle& Heinle.

Thorne, S.L. (2008). New media language use and ‘‘bridging activities’’: Implications forplurilingual life in a (partially) digital world. Multi-Media Assisted Language Learning,11(1), 35–60.

Ware, P., & Kramsch, C. (2005). Toward an intercultural stance: Teaching German andEnglish through telecollaboration. The Modern Language Journal, 89(2), 190–205.

40 M.-L. Liaw and S. Bunn-Le Master

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Dal

hous

ie U

nive

rsity

] at

06:

58 0

4 O

ctob

er 2

014