When communicating with NES peers via email, Taiwanese students usually encounter issues of power, style, social distance and rhetoric. All the four issues may interplay with one another and result in complicated variables in online communication. The findings of the present study bear important implications for the use of email and other digital technology to teach L2 writing cross-nationally. First, most of the Taiwanese students strategically modeled or borrowed the American key-pals discourse to negotiate communication issues, which can encourage interactive learning and language acquisition in terms of “appropriateness” of email language use, etiquette of email writing and pragmatic competence in the target language and culture.
Perceptions of linguistic insufficiency motivated many Taiwanese students to use dictionaries, revise drafts and search for topic-related information to compensate for their writing limitations. These
findings confirm that incorporating email into language classrooms encourages acquisition of the target language and culture in an authentic context (Absalom & Marden, 2004; Beavois & Eledge, 1995; Fedderholt, 2001; Warschauer, 1996). It is noteworthy that
“academically correct” or formal discourses may not always interest American students who expect to close the social distance. In traditional academic writing classrooms, most L2 writing teachers teach academically appropriate rhetoric and conventions, and when email activity is incorporated into a writing course, teachers may expect students to use standard English to write emails. However, not all NES correspondents favor a formal academic style in email communication because formal academic discourse may create a sense of distance. Second, EFL students should develop effective discursive and nondiscursive strategies of negotiation in online communication. For example, being sensitive about correspondents’
expectations, taking an appropriate and egalitarian approach, and applying multiple communication channels via various CMC tools, such as MSN, YouTube, blogs, or message boards, may facilitate online communication (Bloch, 2002; You, 2007). Third, Taiwanese students seem to have limited pragmatic knowledge in formality, politeness, and social distance; furthermore, their writing seems to lack mitigations, hedges or downgraders. Social-pragmatic instruction in L2 writing, which assists students to employ culturally appropriate and contextually effective discourse is imperative. Last, people from different cultures seem to perceive social distance differently. Chinese students usually regard sharing personal feelings and their lives as being open and friendly, but American students may define openness and friendliness in a broader way.
This present study has made an important contribution to investigation of emergent issues in the teaching of L2 writing for online communication. However, issues of identity were not discussed due to limitations in the research design; moreover, issues related to gender were not explored in-depth because of the discrepant gender distribution of the participants and insufficient information obtained from the students’ emails, reflections or interviews. Thus, further studies are suggested to explore identity and gender issues of NNES and NES students’ online communication. Moreover, whether the notion of social distance in face-to-face contexts affects virtual social distance is also an issue that deserves attention and needs to be further explored.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The paper was funded by the National Science Council: NSC 98-2914-I-004-008-A1. The author is grateful to the blind reviewers and the editor for their scrutiny and constructive comments and advice. I also would like to thank Cheryl Sheridan for her proofreading and helpful suggestions on an earlier version of this paper.
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