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Besides, the results of this study show the importance of Internet multimedia resources in the intercultural communication learning. In this project, the three students all thought that the Internet multimedia was an important medium to express not only their life experience but also their humor or new image they created. The students’ experience of using Internet multimedia shows that nowadays there is need for learner to learn how to apply technology to their English communication. Thus, teachers need to consider how to help learners integrate multimedia resources to present more aspects of their culture and life and increase their participation in intercultural communication on the Internet.
Last but not least, parents’ positive mediation of children’s Internet use is necessary. Daphne’s high motivation intercultural communication learning was related to her mother’s assistance in her previous email experience. From the case of Daphne, it shows that parents should pay more attention to and be actively involved in children’s Internet use. If parents can guide children to learn how to use Internet as the important tool for communication and academic learning, children will have more opportunity to utilize Internet to develop their intercultural communicative
competence.
Limitations of the study
There are some limitations in this study. First, because of time limitation, only three students in the intercultural communication project were closely observed and analyzed for only five months. This study only reveals a limited number of learners’
success and challenges. Therefore, if more participants are observed for a longer time, it is possible to get more findings about learners’ follow-up development in the
process of intercultural communication.
Second, although in the reflection journals, the students mentioned that multimedia resources were important for their intercultural communication, it was
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time-consuming to interact with international partners through multimedia. Due to the problem of the campus network speed, learners always waited for a long time to watch all of their international partners’ videos or slideshows and had less time to respond or ask questions based on the international partners’ multimedia works.
Therefore, it is suggested that further study need to overcome Internet speed problem which will influence the quality and fluency of intercultural communication learning.
Conclusion
In the world where rapid global communication practices mediate an array of interpersonal and cultural activities with the aid of Internet and new technologies, it is necessary for learners to acquire the abilities of communicating with members of other cultures effectively in the social context. This present study provides an example of how elementary school students find their own way to communicate with people from different countries. According to the results, learners’ previous experience and personality affect how they develop intercultural communicative competence.
Therefore, the study suggests that further research is needed to investigate the role of learners’ personal factors in their development of intercultural communication in order to gain some insight about how to help learners more actively use English in the intercultural communication to satisfy their need of exploring the world.
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