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(4) Some people in our class spit! Because they think that is fun. (Only me and Ben think so.)
(Blog comment by Larry on “A day at my school”, January 14, 2009) This conversation made the students aware of the diversity of “Class cultures” in their own school. Daphne said:
I find we have many cultures. Our school culture is quite different from our international partners’ but actually we also have different class cultures in our own school (Interview #5 with Daphne, January, 19, 2009).
While discussing the school rules with other local students, they got the chance to reflect on their school culture. Some of them noticed cultural differences were no longer limited to country boundary but existed in their daily life. That meant they got new findings not only about their partners’ but their own school life. According to Damen (1987), this is fundamental for developing intercultural understanding.
To sum up, the process of communicating with the international partners motivated the students to ponder on their presumptions not only about the
international partners’ cultures but also their own cultures. In their reflection journals, most of them mentioned that after interacting with their partners, they noticed there were so many similarities between them and their international partners, which were what they had never thought about. Brian said, “I never thought we had so many things in common” (Reflection journal#4 by Brian, January 19, 2009). It is evident that the students started to reflect on the similarities and differences between and within cultures, which is what Byram (2007) advocated as an important component for the development of intercultural understanding.
Learning to think cultural issues from different perspectives
When the students learnt the cultural differences and similarities through interacting with international partners, they also learnt how to think from different perspectives through discussing with other local students.
For example, during Phase 2, as mentioned above, the students were unhappy
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about being mistaken as Chinese. When the instructor asked the students how they felt when their partners mistook Taiwan for China, most of them said they felt angry because they really did not like China. Moreover, some of them interpreted their American partners’ misunderstanding as “being disrespectful” because the students thought it was really a huge mistake to confuse China with Taiwan. Ryan said, “It is really insulting.” But some of the students seemed to think of the mistake as a natural response because they thought American partners had little chance to know where Taiwan was (Teacher’s log, October, 16, 2008). Their different reactions to the American students’ misunderstanding made the instructor thought it was a good chance to encourage the students to share their opinions. Thus, on the blog “Research Diary,” the instructor raised a question: What do you think about the American partners thinking that Taiwan and China are in the same place?One of the students, Daphne, replied to this question from the perspective of the international partners.
I’m not angry about their misunderstanding because the location of Taiwan is quite close to China and our looks and language are similar. The international partners do not know as much as we do about the cultures of Taiwan and China.
Of course they have such misunderstanding!
(Blog comment by Daphne on “Research Diary”, October 30, 2008) Interestingly, Daphne’s comments seemed to make other students reflect more deeply on the issue. When they read Daphne’s opinion about American partners’
misinterpretation, they became more willing to accept the international partners’
misunderstanding and to think of the issue from their partners’ perspective. For example, Ryan, who was very upset about being mistaken, learnt how to think in a different way.
I’m not angry about their understanding because they live far away from us and it is normal that they do not know much about us. If we mistook them as
Canadians, would they be angry? (Blog comment by Ryan, on “Research Diary”, October 30, 2008)
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The discussion developed from the instructor’s questions and deepened by exchanging ideas with local students on the blog could help the students develop more intercultural thinking from different perspectives. The following instances of the students’ comments on the blog “Research Diary” showed that they learnt to think in different ways at each phase.
(1) I think each country has its own advantages and disadvantages. Although there is lots of trash in Taiwan, there are still many beautiful natural
environments. Although Italy has much cleaner environment, they also have social problem such as poverty gap.
(Blog comment by Ben to the question “Do you think Italy is better than Taiwan?” on “Research Diary”, October 21, 2008)
(2) I learn from “A day at my school” that American students do lots of project.
And I think Taiwan education emphasizes memorizing knowledge so teachers always ask us memorize lesson content and the meaning of poems.
(Blog comment by Ben to the question “What are differences and similarities between Taiwan and America?” on “Research Diary”, October 21, 2008)
(3) In the west, there are people believe in Catholicism (We just learn it from the Social studies class). And just as Ryan said, they can comfort their mind through religion. Through Civic education, they can learn how to the citizens and the laws of their country. But I think they can learn how to develop the sense of honor (both to their country and their god).
(Blog comment by Daphne to the question “Do you think why they need to learn Catholic education and Civic education” on “Research Diary”, October 21, 2008)
(4) I agree with Larry. As he said, we can not always think the international partners’ school lunch must be delicious. We do not really know what their school lunch taste like!
(Teresa’s comment on Larry’s reply to the question “What do you learn from the American partners’ videos of school rules?” on “Research Diary”, January, 16, 2009)
(5) I agree with Daphne! She found that when she learnt the international
partners’ schools rules, she also realized the similarities and differences between us and them. I think that is very important.
(Ryan’s comment on Daphne’s reply to the question “What do you learn from the American partners’ videos of school rules?” on “Research Diary”, January, 16, 2009)
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Moreover, at the last phase, not only the instructor but also the student played the role of encouraging other members to think deeper about any issues through asking questions. For example, one of the students, Brian, tended to ask other members questions after he read their comments.
I support Teresa’s idea about having a Writing Wednesday in school and practicing writing some meaningful things. But what exactly does “meaningful things” mean? What meaningful things should we write?
(Blog comment by Brian on “Research Diary”, January 5, 2009) These incidents support the positive impact of the blog environment on the intercultural learning, suggested by Elola and Oskoz (2008), who said that students could perceive benefits from blog interaction and develop intercultural understanding when compelled by the comments and questions on the blog.
This intercultural project “A day at my school” provided an opportunity for the six students to communicate with their international partners on the blog. The critical incidents above show that the students could learn intercultural communication competence and intercultural thinking by means of interacting with their partners on the blog. First, the students developed strong motivation for intercultural
communication as they could use multimedia materials to present themselves and gained positive feedback from the international partners. Then the students faced the difficulties of maintaining the communication with their international partners because they lacked the experience of interacting with people on the Internet. By observing other students’ blog posts and comments, the students gradually found the ways of expressing their ideas on the blogs. After the students’ cultural assumptions were repeatedly challenged by their international partners and discussed the cultural issues with other local peers, the students became aware of the differences and similarities between cultures. They took a step back to evaluate their own belief and also able to critically evaluated others’ belief and behaviors. Moreover, they reflected
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on their improper or naive presumption, such as their negative impression about their own culture and overgeneralization of the international partners. Finally, the students could appreciate the cultural differences and similarities and learn to see things from multiple perspectives. Thus, intercultural competence had a chance to develop.
For the six students, it was their first time to learn cultures by interacting with others on a blog and at the end of the project they all had learnt how to think cultural issues from different perspectives and increased their confidence in communicating in English. .The students demonstrated their capacity of developing high order thinking skills and using L2 to interact with people in the intercultural environment which were totally different from their past learning experience. Their achievement is very impressive because, in the past, there seemed to be an agreement that direct contact with native speakers was considered the way that facilitated intercultural education.
However, did all these students successfully understand the real meaning of intercultural interaction? Based on the researcher’ observation, one of the students, Daphne, had few problems with interacting with the international partners in English and gave impressive reflections on the cultural issues. Compared to Daphne, some of the student, like Teresa, spent much time adapting themselves to the blog
communication environment. They struggled with interacting with their partners in English and producing their intercultural thinking. The students’ different
performance in the intercultural communication pointed out the need to clarify some questions. Since they had different performances in the project and developed their intercultural understanding at different paces, what factors made them behave so differently during the process? And more important, how did each of them overcome the difficulties and finally develop their intercultural competences? Therefore, it is necessary to acquire more detailed understanding of the students’ previous learning style, how they gradually developed their intercultural understanding during the
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process and how their attitude toward intercultural learning changed. Since
intercultural learning is strongly linked to language learning (Mara, 2007), how were their attitudes toward English learning before and after communication with others on the blog?
Thus, in next section, the researcher zoomed in on three of the students to see how each of them developed their intercultural understanding in the process. Based on the second research questions: How do the three students in a Taiwanese elementary school develop intercultural competence by sharing their school life to their
international partners through weblogs and multimedia sources? and the third research question: How do their attitudes toward learning English change as they learn to discuss school life with international partners in the weblog and the online
environment?, three of the students’ learning experiences were analyzed, respectively.
To have a complete view of how these elementary school students developed their intercultural abilities and changed their attitude toward English learning on the blog, there will be a description about their changes during the process.
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