透過部落格發展跨文化溝通能力: 三位台灣國小學生之個案研究 - 政大學術集成

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(1)國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士在職專班論文指導教授: 招靜琪博士 Advisor: Dr. Chin-Chi Chao. Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence through Weblogs: The Case of Three Elementary School Students 透過部落格發展跨文化溝通能力: 三位台灣國小學生之個案研究. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. i Un. 研究生: 張齡云撰 Name: Chang Ling-yun 中華民國九十九年五月 May, 2010 iii. v.

(2) Acknowledgments. I am heavily thankful to my supervisor, Dr. Chin-Chi, Chao, for her inspiring guidance and helpful suggestions throughout my research for this work. This thesis would not have been possible unless she gave me much support and strength. I would also like to thank my colleague, Peggy, Chang, for her reading of the manuscript and. 政治大 students for their volunteering to be my participants of my research and spending 立. sharing the experience of writing a thesis. My gratitude is also extended to my six. ‧ 國. 學. much time recording and reporting their reflection on their intercultural experience. Their contribution gave me a glimpse into the process of intercultural communication. ‧. learning.. sit. y. Nat. Finally, I would like to extend my heart-felt thanks to my family and my. n. al. er. io. boyfriend, Ian. Their support and blessing encouraged me to move on during the completion of the research.. Ch. engchi. iii. i Un. v.

(3) TABLE OF CONTENTS. Acknowledgments.........................................................................................................iii Chinese Abstract..........................................................................................................vii English Abstract............................................................................................................ix Chapter One: Introduction.............................................................................................1 Background............................................................................................................1. 治政 Purpose and Research questions of the study........................................................3 大立 Significance of the Study.......................................................................................4 ‧ 國. 學. Chapter Two: Literature Review…................................................................................5. ‧. Teaching culture in EFL….....................................................................................5. sit. y. Nat. Intercultural learning………………………………………………………..……6. io. er. Cross-cultural awareness…………………………………………………..…...6 Intercultural communicative competence……………………………………..7. al. n. iv n C Telecollaboration and intercultural h e n glearning…………………………………..….8 chi U. Asynchronous learning environment……………………………………..……8 Synchronous learning environment……………………………………………9. Recent studies on weblog projects……………………………………………...10 Cultural learning in Taiwan………………………..............................................12 The need for further studies Intercultural communicative competences in the weblog environment….......………………………………..13 Chapter Three: Methodology….…..............................................................................14 Participants and Context……………………………………………....………..14 The intercultural project……………………………………………………...15 iv.

(4) Data Collection…………………………………….……………………………17 Questionnaire of students’ learning experience and expectation toward the project…………………………………….…….…………………………….17 Teacher’s logs………………………………………………………………...18 Students’ multimedia products and discussion on the weblog……………………………………...........................................18 Students’ reflection journals……………………….........................................18 Semi-structured individual Interviews…………….........................................20 Questionnaire of attitudes of communicating. 治政 in English on the blog…………..…………………........................................20 大立 Procedure………………………………………….…........................................20 ‧ 國. 學. Data analysis……………………………………………………….……….…..21. ‧. Chapter Four: Critical incident overview and Individual case....................................26. io. er. The three students’ learning styles and intercultural. sit. y. Nat. General description of critical incidents…………..…........................................27. experience………………………………………………………………………43. al. n. iv n C Daphne……………………………………………………………………….43 hengchi U. Teresa………………………………………………………….……………...65 Brian………………………………………………………………………….84 Chapter Five: Results and Cross-case discussion……..……………………………103 The critical events that the six students had in the intercultural project…………………………………..………....………103 The development of the three students’ intercultural communicative competences…………………………………..……………………………….104 The change of the three participants’ attitude toward English learning………………………………………………………………………...120 v.

(5) Chapter Six: Conclusions and Implications…………………………….…………..126 Summary of the findings……………………………………………………....126 Pedagogical implications……………………………........................................128 Limitations of the study………………………...……………………………...130 References……………………………………………...…………………………...132 Appendixes…………………………………….…………........................................136. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. vi. i Un. v.

(6) 國立政治大學英國語文學系碩士在職專班碩士論文提要論文名稱：透過部落格發展跨文化溝通能力: 三位台灣國小學生之個案研究. 指導教授：招靜琪教授. 研究生：張齡云. 立. 政治大. ‧ 國. 學. 論文提要內容：. 本個案旨在探討臺灣國小學生在參與透過部落格學習跨文化溝通的計畫. ‧. 後，他們跨文化溝通能力的發展以及學習英語態度的改變。. y. Nat. sit. 本研究方法採用質性研究，一開始先探討學生在面臨跨文化溝通學習過程. n. al. er. io. 中的關鍵事件，接著研究重心會放在探討當中三位學生如何和外國伙伴以及其他. Ch. i Un. v. 師生的學習歷程。研究工具主要為三位學生的訪談、部落格的學習歷程以及省思. engchi. 日記。Byram (2000) 跨文化溝通能力指標用來分析以及辨識學生跨文化溝通能力。本研究發現與外國學生互動的真實學習情境的確能提升學生跨文化溝通的學習動力。然而，缺乏溝通策略也讓學生在過程中感到焦慮而不能投入學習。在另一方面，學生的焦慮也驅使他們去尋求協助以及部落格上的資源以解決問題。透過老師的鼓勵以及同儕間的學習，學生學習如何發展自己的跨文化溝通能力，藉由仿效他人的溝通歷程來學習表達自己的想法。除了學習溝通策略，學生逐漸在過程中發展跨文化意識。他們更願意檢視自己的文化並且以不同角度來思考文化議題。 vii.

(7) 透過更進一步研究當中三位學生的跨文化溝通歷程，他們在學習過程中有不同的表現。雖然他們皆對和外國伙伴交換文化以及學校生活資訊十分有興趣，但是他們的動機持續力、遇到的困難以及在過程中所扮演的角色皆有所不同。這都和學生的學習風格以及對網路使用的認知不同有關。在英語學習態度方面，結果顯示部落格的一些功能例如非同步溝通以及多媒體的整合皆讓學生更能體驗在較無焦慮的情境下學習用英語來進行互動，並且增加他們用自己的方式表達自我。學生在部落格的情境之下，能抱持著正面的態度來與外國伙伴互動。研究結果顯示個人的因素例如學生的背景、對網路使用的認知以及學習焦. 加他們跨文化溝通能力的學習動機這方面的重視。. 學. ‧ 國. 治政慮皆在學習者發展跨文化的過程扮演著重要的角色。因此，本研究希望透過教學大立現場的互動情形，提升老師對如何協助學習者，以及幫助他們整合不同資源來增 ‧. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. viii. i Un. v.

(8) Abstract The case study investigated the development of Taiwan elementary school students’ intercultural communicative competences and their attitude toward English learning as they participated in the intercultural communication project in the blog environment. Grounded on qualitative inquiry, an overview of critical incidents which the students met in the project was discussed. Then the investigation focused on how. 治政 three of the students interacted with the international 大partners, local students, and 立 instructors. The major data collection instruments were adopted including the ‧ 國. 學. individual interviews with the three students, and their blog entries and reflection. ‧. journals. Byram’s (2000) adapted intercultural guidelines were used as the framework. sit. y. Nat. to identify the three students’ intercultural competences.. io. er. It was found that the authentic task of communicating with the international partners was important factor which encouraged the students to get more involved in. al. n. iv n C the communication. However, the of the communication strategies made the h elack ngchi U students feel anxious and stressed and distanced them from the intercultural. communication. On the other hand, the students’ anxiety actually made them look for support and the resources on the blogs which could help them solve the difficulties. Through the instructor’s encouragement and peer learning, the students learnt how to develop intercultural communication skills and understood the benefits of learning how to reuse others’ communication process to express their own ideas. In addition to learning the strategies for intercultural communication, the students gradually developed intercultural awareness. They were more willing to reflect on their own culture and think cultural issues from different perspective. ix.

(9) As further investigating three of the students’ intercultural communication experience, it was found that students had different performance in the project. Although gaining interest in exchanging the information of cultures and school life with international partners, the three cases’ differences were seen in their continuity of motivation, the challenges they faced, and the roles they felt comfortable to be in the intercultural communication project. Their difference are related to learners’ learning styles and their perception of internet use which benefit or stop the cultivation of their intercultural communicative competences. As for their attitude toward English learning, the results shows that the blog. 治政 features like asynchronous communication and multimedia 大 integration could help the 立 students experience the process of using English as the medium for social interaction ‧ 國. 學. with less anxiety and increase their motivation for presenting life experience in their. sit. y. Nat. communicating with international partners on the blogs.. ‧. own way. The students developed positive attitude toward practicing English through. io. er. The results of the study show that personal factors, such as individual background, perception of internet use and anxiety played an important role as. al. n. iv n C learners develop intercultural communication. h e n g c h Thus, i U this study suggests that more efforts should be paid to explore how to support learners and help them integrate. resources in order to increase their participation in intercultural communication on the internet.. x.

(10) CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION Background For a long time, teaching culture has been very important in L2/FL language learning because language and culture are inseparably intertwined (Standards, 1996). A person can not really learn a foreign language without knowing the culture behind it. Brown (1990) indicated, "There are values, presuppositions, about the nature of life and what is good and bad in culture, to be found in any normal use of language" (p. 13). Thus, the language use with cultural awareness is exactly what most L2 and FL. 治政 instructors aim to help students develop. 大立 However, cultural learning has not had enough notice while linguistic competence ‧ 國. 學. has always been the focus of language teaching. Lange (1999) stated that though there. ‧. has been a strong commitment to including culture in the language curriculum for the. sit. y. Nat. past 40 years, culture still remains a superficial aspect of language learning because of. io. er. a lack of agreement and little consensus on how teaching of language and culture should be integrated. Though in the past many researchers used factual transmission. al. n. iv n C method or cross-cultural contrastive to conduct culture teaching and h e napproach gchi U. learning, these two methods tend to lead to stereotypes and oversimplifying the variety of a culture (Crawford-Lange & Lange, 1984; Guest, 2002). In order not to oversimplify the concept of culture, learners need to develop intercultural communicative competence necessary for establishing and maintaining relationships with people from different cultures. It is important for learners to develop the knowledge, skill and attitude to accept and analyze different cultural practices so that they will have the ability to maintain relationships and have better communication with people from different cultural backgrounds (Byram, 1997).. 1.

(11) With the coming of the Internet age, helping learners develop intercultural competence can be more convenient and effective. For example, it can be facilitated by elearning environments (Bélisle, 2007). Learners can interact and share their cultural values and daily life with people from various countries through email, chat room, web-based message board, video conference and so on for intercultural learning. Recently, weblogs have emerged as one of the most widely used tools for cross-cultural asynchronous interaction. Weblogs is a type of website which can be edited by a person or co-edited by a group of people with regular entries of. 治政 commentary, descriptions of events. Entries are commonly 大 displayed in 立 reverse-chronological order. Another strong feature of weblogs is that users can ‧ 國. 學. communicate by presenting information with multimedia resources such as graphics. ‧. or video. For example, users can post not only articles, pictures but also videos and. sit. y. Nat. presentation slides to share and communicate with people around the world. Hiler. io. er. (2002) stressed that weblogs offer a place for people to engage in collaborative activities, knowledge sharing and debate. Weblogs have thus been used for. al. n. iv n C intercultural communication and educational institutions. hlearning e n g cacross hi U. However, there has not been enough research on intercultural competence. development in the weblog environment. Kim (2007) discovered that there was a lack of literature on learning via weblogs. Besides, participants of previous intercultural learning projects involved mostly teenagers or adults, while few children engage in such online intercultural learning activities. Often a language is still learnt with textbooks which only offer “factual” information on the target cultural, instead of encouraging children to think about their own and others’ cultures.. 2.

(12) Since it is important to expose children to other cultures in different ways as early as possible and to minimize the development of stereotypes (Olson, 1982), this case study attempted to explore the possibility of developing intercultural competence through a telecommunication project using weblogs. The investigation documented and analyzed how children developed their intercultural communicative competence, what factors affected their intercultural communication development and how their attitudes towards intercultural learning change during the weblog project. Purpose and Research Questions of the Study The purpose of this study was to investigate the process of elementary school. 治政 students developing their intercultural communicative 大competence in the weblog 立 environment and the individual factors that influenced the students’ intercultural ‧ 國. 學. communication learning. To achieve the objective of the study, the research first. ‧. investigated the overview of all the six students’ intercultural experience and then. sit. y. Nat. further analyzed the success and challenges that three of the students faced as they. io. er. tried to communicate with the international partners on the weblogs. The research questions are stated as follows:. al. n. iv n C (1) What critical events did theh students in a Taiwanese e n g c h i U elementary school experience. when interacting with their international partners through weblogs and multimedia sources?. (2) How did three students in a Taiwanese elementary school develop intercultural competence by sharing their school life to their international partners through weblogs and multimedia sources? (3) How did their attitudes toward learning English change as they learnt to discuss school life with international partners in the weblog and the online environment?. 3.

(13) Significance of the study It is important to involve cultural understanding in EFL teaching and learning. With the aid of elearning environments, children should have access to learning different cultures and develop intercultural competence. It has hoped that this case study will provide useful insights and implications to improve the educational practice of putting children in contact with international partners through the weblog environment.. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. n. er. io. sit. y. Nat. al. Ch. engchi. 4. i Un. v.

(14) CHAPTER 2 LITERATURE REVIEW This chapter covers the development of teaching culture in EFL and the concept of intercultural communication. Also, with the increasing popularity of Internet, the use of Internet tools and their use in intercultural communication are explored. Finally, the presentation of current situation of cultural teaching and learning in Taiwan elementary schools shows the lack of exposing elementary students to the English communication with intercultural awareness. Teaching culture in EFL. 治政 Teaching culture in EFL context has become 大 increasingly important in recent 立 years because languages and culture are closely linked and knowledge of culture ‧ 國. 學. holds a key to the understanding of a language (Masuduzzaman, 2006). The. ‧. successful integration of culture and language teaching can contribute significantly to. sit. y. Nat. general humanistic knowledge, language ability and cultural sensitivity and global. io. er. understanding strongly suggested as a required component of basic education (Galloway, 1985; Lafayette & Strasheim 1981; Strasheim 1981).. al. n. iv n C Though taking cultural learning account is not a new concept in language h e ninto gchi U. teaching and learning, integrating culture and language teaching is still a challenge. Many EFL teachers are afraid of teaching culture because they think they have to teach masses information of the target culture. The problem is “fact- only” cultural. teaching, for which the only goal is to amass bits of information, has been criticized for downplaying the meaning of culture (Liaw, 2006) and establishing stereotypes rather than diminishing them since this approach provides no means of explaining cultural variations. It is also not appropriate to leave students unprepared when facing a large amount of culture information since they need tools or skills to process a new culture and facilitate intercultural understanding (Crawford-Lane & Lang, 1984). 5.

(15) Since culture cannot be grasped in its entirety, cultural instruction should be conducted on the basis of developing cross-culture awareness and understanding the concept of culture-bond values and behaviors as well as the relational nature of cultural study. These ideas lead to the development of intercultural learning. Intercultural learning The principle of intercultural learning is that students learn the values of other’s culture at the same time when they consider their own (Knutson, 2006). Intercultural learning also requires reducing the coverage of information about the target culture to makes more space for considering important culture-general issues, such as “the need. 治政 for empathy with others, and for understanding the大 nature of culture and its internal 立 conflicts” ( Damen, 1987, p. 262-263). ‧ 國. 學. Cross-cultural awareness. ‧. To successfully understand another culture, awareness of self is essential.. sit. y. Nat. Damen (1987) offers the following explanation for cross-cultural awareness. He said,. io. er. “Cross-cultural awareness involved uncovering and understanding one’s own culturally conditioned behavior and thinking, as well as the patterns of others. Thus,. al. n. iv n C the process involves not only perceiving similarities and differences in other h e n gthe chi U cultures but also recognizing the givens of the native culture,” (p.141). Besides,. Hanvey (1979, p. 53) describes cross-cultural awareness as an advanced stage of development in three levels: (1) awareness of superficial or very visible cultural traits (stereotype); (2) awareness of significant and subtle highly contrastive traits; (3) awareness of an insider’s point of view of a given culture. Learners build up their cultural awareness in the cultural leaning from the beginning stage of interpreting other cultures based their stereotype to the final stage of analyzing things from insider’s view. 6.

(16) Intercultural communicative competence Researchers and instructors agree that cross-cultural awareness is a valuable goal and developing cross-cultural awareness is an essential stage for developing intercultural communicative competence if the learner is to be an intercultural competent communicator ( Korzilius, van Hooft, & Planken, 2007). Byram (1997) pointed out the efficacy of communication depended on the using language to demonstrate one’s willingness to maintain and establish relationship instead of solely the exchange of information and sending of messages. To facilitate the learning process, He designed a model of intercultural communicative competence and put it. 治政 into practice in educational contexts (Byram, 1997,大 2001). In his model, intercultural 立 communicative competence consists of five factors. They are (1) the attitude of ‧ 國. 學. curiosity and openness and the willingness to challenge one’s own meanings and. ‧. behaviors and the willingness to value those of others, (2) the knowledge of social. sit. y. Nat. groups in one’s own and the interlocutor’s cultures and knowledge about process of. io. er. interaction, (3) the skills of interpreting and relating, (4) skills of discovering and interacting and (5) critical awareness, the ability of evaluating critically cultural. al. n. iv n C practices and products in one’s h own and other culture e n g c h i U (Byram, 1997). Learners are. gradually led to become aware of cultural differences and similarities and to adjust their attitudes, stereotypes and communicative skills in order to establish and maintain relationships with people from different countries. This suggests that the key agent in developing intercultural communicative competence is learners, not teachers. The learners need to direct their attention towards the learning content and goals effectively. They must be able to reflect on and apply metacognitive knowledge to their cultural learning (Sercu, 2004) to cope with intercultural experiences and stress. To be an intercultural person, a learner must be active and autonomous to cultivate his/her intercultural competence. 7.

(17) Telecollaboration and intercultural learning The concept of promoting learner autonomy and intercultural competence are both required in the learning process of computer- mediated communication (CMC) (Fisher, Evans & Esch, 2004). With the aid of technology and Internet, learners can actively explore new information and interact with the people from various countries. Throne (2005) stated that among all the CMC learning, telecollaboration offered the greatest opportunity for cross-cultural collaboration of learners on a global level. O’Dowd and Ritter (2006) defined telecollaboration as “the use of online communication tools to bring together language learners in different countries for the. 治政 development of collaborative project work and intercultural 大 exchange (p. 623). 立 Telecollaboration covers many intercultural learning activities. It draws on ‧ 國. 學. asynchronous tools like email, and discussion forums, and synchronous tools like. ‧. online chatting, and video-conferencing. Online multimedia tools can break the. sit. y. Nat. national boundaries between learners and help them, though the Internet, obtain the. io. er. real authentic materials from their partners.. A number of recent studies have explored how telecollaboration projects help. al. n. iv n C learners develop their intercultural There are many studies on how the h ecompetence. ngchi U two types of CMC environments, asynchronous and synchronous, facilitate. intercultural learning through students’ self-report, interview or survey. However, other studies indicate the limitations of CMC environment, such as resources inaccessibility, and social constraint, impede students’ cross-cultural learning (Belz, 2002; Belz & Műller-Hartmann, 2003; O’Dowd, 2003). Asynchronous learning environment Because of the popularity of the Internet, numerous language teachers and researchers around the world have been using the asynchronous tools, such as forums, bulletin boards and e-mail, to create the environment for intercultural communication 8.

(18) and second language learning for many years. Teachers can provide target language speakers with whom their learners can interact, and also enrich the language learning environment by offering learners the chance to participate in the formation and maintenance of learning communities. Some studies indicated the advantages of using asynchronous tools like emails or e-forum as the platform of intercultural communication and learning. For example, Liaw (2006) found that learners could develop intercultural communicative competence in the telecollaboration project in which the university students from Taiwan and the United states discussed on the online forum. Kern (1996) in their studies the asynchronous environment helps the L2. 治政 learner become more confident about his/her language 大 use and other researchers noted 立 that the asynchronous communication projects develop intercultural competence (Belz, ‧ 國. 學. 2003; O’Dowd, 2003; Muller-Hartmann, 2000; Ware & Kramsch, 2005).. ‧. But the limitations of asynchronous environments have also been discussed as. sit. y. Nat. some researchers have questioned the possibility of helping learners engaging in. io. er. intercultural projects. For example, many researchers (Dalsgaard, 2006; Rick& Lamberty, 2005; Weingardt, 2004) analyzed many asynchronous learning projects.. al. n. iv n C They found that current asynchronous like emails and discussion forum h e nenvironments gchi U are centralized and unorganized environments which may cause students to have less motivation of participating online discussion. In centralized environment, lots of information is collected within a hub website. Students could easily get lost and have no clues whether the discussion is initiated unless they visit the website regularly.(Treese, 2004) Synchronous learning environment Recently, with the development of synchronous tools, many researchers have conducted studies in synchronous online learning environments. Some of them studied the roles of text chats and audiographic and audio conferencing as effective 9.

(19) communicative tools to stimulate language and cultural learning. Jauregi and Bañados (2008) observed the linguistic and intercultural learning situations emerging during the interaction and analyzed learners’ experience with a project in which students from two universities in Chile and Netherlands interacting with each other making use of video-web conference communication tools. They found the implement of video-web technology enabled teachers and learners to create a virtual environment collaboratively for learning a language and its culture. Such projects provide opportunities for learners to build positive connection between two different cultures, giving rise to an authentic cultural learning experience which. 治政 learners carry out with close cooperation and high 大 enthusiasm. Also, Jauregi and 立 Bañados noted that compared with asynchronous environment, synchronous ‧ 國. 學. environments might help learners more in the aspect of negotiation of intercultural. ‧. meaning. Communication at the same time through the Internet platform offers the. sit. y. Nat. possibility of solving problems instantly, through questioning and clarification,. io. er. difficulties or misunderstandings that might emerge in cross-cultural communication events. Thorne (2003) concluded that students loved a synchronous chat tool more. al. n. iv n C than e-mail for “authentic interpersonal building” (p. 185). h e n grelationship chi U. Though videoconferencing tools provide teachers and learners more lively. intercultural experience, there are still some practical limitations. For example, O’Dowd (2000) has noted that group size, cost, sound quality and time shortage are problems encountered in his study. He therefore suggested that video conferencing tools combine with other language activities such as e-mail exchange and video production so that learners can practice the target language with native speakers. Recent studies on weblog projects Weblog is a popular online communication tool around the world and has gained importance in facilitating co-publish of project work for cultural learning (Godwin 10.

(20) Jones, 2003). It is also a place where users can integrate different multimedia sources like website links, pictures, texts, photos and videos. Elola and Oskoz (2008) described weblogs, also called “blog” or blogging, as the online personal journals or personal web pages which allow learners (individually, in pair, or in groups) to upload description of events and reflection. In the blog environment, blog posts are displayed in reverse chronological order, which means the most recent post showing up at the top. Blogs also include many hyperlinks to resources of other websites and interpersonal or intrapersonal communication. Some researchers find many features of weblogs can overcome the weakness of the other. 治政 CMC tools such as email and discussion forums. For 大example, the RSS (Really 立 Simple Syndication) system, a format for publishing news and the brief content of ‧ 國. 學. websites to other users, automatically delivers the latest information to users. With. ‧. this function they do not have to check the blog every day and they will not miss any. sit. y. Nat. new information. Its convenience of contacting with other people raises the users’. io. er. motivation to actively join in discussion (Kim et al., 2007). The easy access of publishing tools of weblogs also helps young learner to overcome complicated steps. al. n. iv n C to obtain or edit information (Maag, The weblog environment is designed as an h e n2006). gchi U open system to be used by anyone anywhere; people can join the communication. without the logon procedure. Also, users develop the sense of “ownership” in the weblogs communication through taking responsibility to publish the information and context, designed to their liking, which is helpful for reducing stress or anxiety and increasing motivation of participating in online communication. (Pena Shaff et al, 2005). Further, while the primary tool of communication in weblogs is text, users share the audience their ideas through "photoblog", "audioblog" or "videoblog". Hence the blogger is able to express themselves through multiple media to reflect their daily life and thinking (James, 2004). 11.

(21) There are some intercultural projects using weblogs to facilitate students’ cultural learning. For instance, Hauck (2007) studied the affordance of weblog and its impact on learners’ intercultural experience. He found that learners who can benefit from cultural learning have abilities to make efficient use of the weblogs in order to engage in intercultural interaction. In the study of investigating around 400 university students from Taiwan and the U.S about which online communicative tool they like most for English communicating, 30.9% of them chose weblogs as their favorite. The user-friendly design of weblogs and the informal interaction environment make students like to express themselves on weblogs (Chou, Chang, Chen & Chen, 2008). Cultural learning in Taiwan. 立. 政治大. Based on the Grade 1-9 Curriculum Competence Indicators of English learning. ‧ 國. 學. published by the Ministry of Education of the R.O.C., Taiwan, cultural learning and. ‧. international understanding is an essential ability for elementary school students.. sit. y. Nat. Nevertheless, based on the researcher’ s observation, the cultural content presented in. io. er. English textbooks is limited to a short introduction of words and sentences about holiday celebrations in the U.S. There is not enough cultural diversity presented and. al. n. iv n C therefore students easily have stereotypes other cultures. Though recently there h e n g cabout hi U are some projects about cross-cultural learning in Taiwan, the participants are mostly university students (Liaw & Johnson, 2001.; Liaw, 2006). Since Taiwan elementary school students have learnt both English communication and Internet use in school, they should have more chance to practice the cultural skills with the aid of technology.. 12.

(22) The need for further studies Intercultural communicative competences in the weblog environment Though there are some studies showing that students can be motivated to learn and can reduce stress in online communication in the weblog environment, few researches really focus on developing intercultural communicative competence in the weblog environment under the analytical framework of intercultural communicative competence. More important, in Taiwan, cultural learning is still limited to “fact-only” cultural teaching approach. It is important to expose learners to different cultures through real experience of communicating with international partners in the. 治政 weblog environment, and in this way it is hoped that 大they will develop cross-cultural 立 awareness and the abilities to maintain effective communication with people of ‧ 國. 學. different cultural backgrounds. This study aimed at studying what and how learners. ‧. communicated with international partners and how they attitude toward learning. n. al. er. io. sit. y. Nat. changed in the intercultural communication process.. Ch. engchi. 13. i Un. v.

(23) CHAPTER 3 METHODOLOGY Participants and Context Participants of this study were six 6th graders from an elementary school in the Taipei city which puts a lot of emphasis on English education as well as Information Technology. There are more than 100 notebook computers available for teachers and students to use. There is also a campus-wide English TV channel called “Mingde E Channel,” which, on Friday mornings, broadcasts such English programs as Alphabet and Vocabulary lessons and Campus News. These programs provide opportunities for. 治政 5 graders with higher scores in English (typically 大 more than 90 in school semester 立 exams) and often have higher motivation for learning new things to be selected as th. ‧ 國. 學. reporters. The reporters are trained to speak or write in English, reflect on campus. ‧. activities before they write news scripts on campus news. They also learn how to edit. sit. y. Nat. presentation slides, weblog and videos as these are required skills for putting together. io. er. English programs for the channel.. The six 6th graders selected as participants of this study had already served as. al. n. iv n C reporters of the campus-wide English programs when they were 5th graders. There U h e nTV i h gc are several reasons for this requirement. First, reporters typically have higher English proficiency levels needed for this study that utilizes English blogs as the platform. Second, this study was expected to last for five months and was carried out during lunch break; such a long data collection period would require students to have high motivation and patience. Third, as reporters these students would have already learnt how to reflect on issues happening around them and edit multimedia materials (pictures, texts, presentations, and videos) and how to present them on a weblog. Fourth, as the instructor/ researcher who provided training to reporters of the campus-wide English TV program, she would have established rapport with these 14.

(24) participants, which is essential to a student-centered intercultural research project. The international partners who the participants interacted with were two student groups and an adult. One of the student groups is from 5th graders of an elementary school of Maryland, U.S. and the other is from 4th graders of an elementary school of Georgia, U.S.. The adult is a 4th grade English teacher from Umbria, Italy. The researcher located them through the website called “epals.” Upon initial contacts, the international partners were found to have strong motivation and interest in this study. Arrangements were then made to have the student groups from Taiwan, U.S., and Italy to work together from September, 2008 to January, 2009. Table3.1 presents the. 學. Years Participants 50 students. Conyers, Georgia, USA.. 4. 21 students. Umbria, Italy. 4. a 4th grade English teacher (Andrea Mennella). n. C The intercultural project h. y. Melisa Cowles. er. io. al. Carrie Clark. ‧. 5. Nat. Clarksville, Maryland, USA. Instructor. sit. Locations. ‧ 國. 治政 information about the international partners. 大立 Table 3.1: The locations and the numbers of the international partners. engchi. i Un. v. During this project, the students worked on two designed blogs titled “A day at my school” (See Figure 3.1) and “Research diary” (See Figure 3.2) for the intercultural communication. They shared and discussed their school life with the international partners using the blog titled “A day at my school” as the platform. On the other blog titled “Research Diary,” the students had in-depth discussion with each others about the cultural issues they met as they interacted with the international partners. In order to help students express their opinions fully and in details, they were allowed to use both Chinese and English on “Research Diary.” 15.

(25) Figure 3.1: “A day at my school,” the blog where the students communicated with international partners. 立. 政治大. ‧. ‧ 國. 學. io. sit. y. Nat. n. al. er. Figure 3.2: “Research Diary,” the blog where the students communicated with each other. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. In order to make the students feel that the intercultural communication was close to their life, the local instructor/ researcher used some of the students’ school experience as the topics of the intercultural project because the students and the international partners were both familiar with their school life. There were four topics in the intercultural discussion: Learning courses, school lunch, extracurricular activities, and school rules. At the beginning of each phase, the students were guided to read the brief descriptions about the topics and told what materials they were supposed to develop and design on the blogs. Next, based on the students’ familiarity with multimedia tools, the students were required to present their school life 16.

(26) individually or cooperatively. For example, the students were asked to work as a team to shoot the videos of introducing their PE and Mandarin classes because shooting videos was a complicated task which the students were not able to complete alone. As the students were more familiar with how to present their life with the aid of multimedia, they were allowed to work on their own multimedia works to present the school life from their own perspectives (See more in Appendix D).In addition to presenting their school life through multimedia tools, the students expressed their personal opinions and ask questions individually through blog posts or comments. They could freely initiate an intercultural discussion or respond to the international. difficulties of translating their words into English.. ‧. Data Collection. 學. ‧ 國. 治政 partners’ blog comments. The role of the local instructor/ 大 researcher in the project was 立 to assist students to organize their multimedia works and help them overcome the. sit. y. Nat. Following Elola and Oskoz’s research approach (2008) and taking Mathison’s. io. er. suggestion (1988), the researcher collected multiple data sets from a background questionnaire, teacher’s logs, the six students’ multimedia products and discussion. al. n. iv n C records on the weblog with international reflection journals, semi-structured h e n gpartners, chi U interviews, and a final questionnaire.. Questionnaire of learning experience and expectation toward the project In order to understanding the students’ attitude toward learning and initial expectation toward the intercultural communication, the students were required to fill out a questionnaire before the project. On the questionnaire there were questions on their learning background, English learning experiences and performance in class, their hypothesis about the schools life in the U.S. and Italy (the target cultures studied in the project) and their initial expectation toward communicating with the international partners on the blog. This background questionnaire is attached as 17.

(27) Appendix A. The follow-up interviews were conducted when the researcher found there was a need to further investigate their answers of the questionnaire. Teacher’s logs In the process of data collection, logs were kept to record the instrucor/ researcher’s observation of and thoughts on how participants discussed, designed, and developed intercultural materials. Students’ multimedia products and discussion on the weblog In the project, the students communicated with the partners from Italy and the U.S. in English through the weblog titled “A day at my school.” The students. 治政 uploaded their self-created multimedia products to 大 present their school life 立 information and posted blog posts and comments to respond to the international ‧ 國. 學. partners. In order to understand what really happened in the process of the project,. ‧. their multimedia product and the content of blog communication would be recorded. sit. y. Nat. and collected as a source of data for this study. Besides, to have a detailed. io. er. understanding of how the students used English to communicate with their international partners, the data of the blog posts and comments was all originally. al. n. iv n C created by the students. The researcher perform any editing to the students’ h e n gdidcnot hi U English.. Students’ reflection journals After finishing a topic, the students would be asked to record their reflection on the intercultural communication in their reflection journals. Given that the students never learnt how to write English journals, the researcher predicated that the students’ deficiency of writing skills would impede their intercultural reflection and analysis in the blogs. Thus, the students were allowed to write their reflection journals in Chinese. Besides, the students were guided to reflect on their learning process through answering the questions in Reflection Guiding Sheets designed based on Byram’s 18.

(28) (2000) mode of self-assessment of intercultural experience. According to the questions of Reflection Guiding Sheet, the students had to write down (1) the purpose for which they have designed and developed materials to introduce their own culture, to know if they have the ability of change perspective through looking at their own culture from other perspective (2) the similarities and differences between their own culture and the target cultures that they have discovered, to see if they have the knowledge of another country and culture, (3) their feeling about the cultural similarities and differences, to see if they have interest in other people’s way of life, and (4) their new understanding of their own culture and the target cultures (see. 治政 Appendix B). In their last reflection journal, students 大would be required to compare 立 their hypothesis before joining the project with what they learn during the ‧ 國. 學. intercultural learning. Besides, they were asked to evaluate which parts of the project. ‧. improved their motivation for intercultural communication. In order to avoid the. io. er. a language of their choice (Chinese or English.). sit. y. Nat. problem of language limitation, the students could write their reflection journals on in. Although there were many open-ended questions of the Reflection Guiding. al. n. iv n C Sheets to be answered by the students, students were able to provide sufficient h e n the gchi U. reflection data for this study. The researcher/teacher was well experienced in guiding students to keep “research diaries” for previous inquiry projects. For this study, she also planed to engage each participant in carefully guided discussion before the students started their reflection. Students’ products, discussion on the weblog and reflection journals served as the major data to be analyzed and investigated for the development of intercultural communicative competence during the project.. 19.

(29) Semi-structured individual Interviews Students were interviewed based on their reflection right after they finished a topic. There were four interviews based on students’ reflections on the four topics: Learning courses, lunch, extracurricular activities, and school rules. Each of the interviews was to be conducted in Chinese and was expected to last for 20 minutes. In order to realize the students’ performance in class, the students’ homeroom, computer and English teachers were also interviewed in Chinese. All the interviews would be audiotaped and transcribed for analysis. Questionnaire of attitudes of communicating in English on the blog. 治政 To understand students’ attitude toward learning 大and communicating in English 立 on the blog, at the end of the project, students were asked to fill out another ‧ 國. 學. questionnaire (Appendix C). This was to find out whether they have any attitude. sit. y. Nat. Procedure. ‧. changes about learning English.. io. er. The intercultural learning project and interviews would be conducted during lunch breaks twice a week for the 20 weeks during the semester. There were several. al. n. iv n C steps in this study to help students in the project and to collect data. h etonengage gchi U. The project was aimed to create a situated learning environment which could. motivate the students to learn how to communicate with international partners. Therefore, at the beginning of the project, students were informed that they had been selected by the principal to be the “School Ambassadors” and to participate in an intercultural project called “A day at my school.” They were going to take the responsibility of introducing their school life to people from different countries on the weblogs. Before the students participated in the intercultural communication project, they were also required to fill out a background questionnaire (Appendix A) As the students interacted with the international partners, they learnt how to use 20.

(30) different strategies to maintain the intercultural conversation and how to present themselves through multimedia resources. Besides, they also had to overcome the difficulties and frustration of being not able to get involved in the intercultural communication and found their roles in the blog community. The students’ learning process was recorded through their blog comments, multimedia products and the researcher’s observation of the students’ change in the learning project. After finished a topic, students would be asked to write down their reflections, including the knowledge of their own culture or the target cultures (i.e., the U.S. and Italy) that they have learnt, their interpretation about the knowledge, processes of solving problems if. 治政 any. Students would then be interviewed by the researcher 大 to clarify issues and 立 problems identified from observation, questionnaire, and their reflections. ‧ 國. 學. After the four topics had all been completed, students were required to fill out. ‧. the second questionnaire which asked about their attitudes toward learning and using. sit. y. Nat. English in the weblog. Then, they were interviewed again to clarify issues and. io. er. problems identified from observation, their final reflections, and the questionnaire. Collection of students’ products continued until the end of the project.. n. al. Data analysis. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Following case study methods and interpretivist tradition (Garratt& Hodkinson, 1998), this researcher analyzed the data by adopting the grounded theory approach (Strauss& Corbin, 1990), using both open and axial coding to investigate what and how intercultural communicative competence is developed. Besides, the researcher used Liaw’s (2006) adaption of Byram’s (2000) guideline of intercultural communicative competence as the initial guiding framework and anal yzed students’ intercultural experience. Byram’s model has been used for teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence for many years and thus is extensively applied to studies examining the outcomes of intercultural exchanges (Belz, 2002, 21.

(31) 2003; Liaw, 2006; Lomicka, 2006; Műeller-Hartmann, 2006; O’Dowd, 2003, 2006; Schneider& von der Emde, 2006). Byram advocated that the successful intercultural communication depended on different social competences to maintain interpersonal relationship. Thus, Byram defined the five components of intercultural competence which were complementary to a language learner’s communicative competence: attitude, knowledge, skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, and critical cultural awareness. According to the five components of intercultural competence, Byram developed the guideline of intercultural communicative competence. There are four categories of intercultural communicative. 治政 competences: a) Interest in knowing other people’ way 大 of life and introducing one’s 立 own cultures to others, b) Ability to change perspective, c) knowledge about one’s ‧ 國. 學. own and other’ culture for intercultural communication, and d) Knowledge of the. ‧. intercultural communication process. And in each category, there are descriptions. sit. y. Nat. used to identify the students’ intercultural competence (See Table 3.2). Table 3.2: The categories and Definitions of Byram’s (2000) Adapted Guideline. D. Knowledge about the intercultural communication process. n. C. Knowledge about one’s own and others’ culture for intercultural communication. er. io A. Interest in knowing other people’s way of life and introducing one’s own culture to others B. Ability to change perspective. Definitions. a lbe interested in other people’s iA2. v To be interested in the daily A1. To experienceC of daily life, or presenting n experience of a variety of social h e nofgdaily one’s own experience c hlifei toU groups within a society and not others, particularly those things not usually presented to outsiders through the media. -To realize that other cultures by seeing things from a different point of view and by looking at one’ own culture from their perspective. C1 To know some important facts about living in one’s own or the other cultures and about the country, state and people. only the dominant culture.. D1 To know how to resolve misunderstandings which arise from people’s lack of awareness of the view point of another culture.. D2 To know how to discover new information and new aspects of the other culture for oneself.. 22. C2 To know how to engage in conversation with people from both one’s own and the other cultures and maintain a conversation by explaining to them the differences and similarities between cultures.

(32) The definitions of the categories were adapted to the study context and represented the different types of data collected from students’ intercultural learning. The units of analysis varied from the short sentences to entire paragraphs of the students’ blog posts, comments and response in the interviews and reflection journals (see Appendix E). The researcher would interpret the data by identifying them with the relevant categories of intercultural communication competence and analyzing the instance number which fell in each category. By constantly comparing and contrasting different data sets (i.e., questionnaires, students’ multimedia products, their discussion on the blog, and interviews, the. 治政 teacher’s logs, the result of the students’ instances analyzed 大 by Byram’s guideline, and 立 others), the researcher identified emerging themes and provide proper interpretations ‧ 國. 學. to address the three research questions (see more in Chapter5). To examine the. ‧. interrater reliability of the adapted guideline, questionnaire, interview, and reflection. sit. y. Nat. journal, first, the researcher and an English teacher of Mingde elementary school gave. io. er. each of the data an independent reading. Then they triangulated their own comments with blog content and the response in questionnaire, interview, and reflection journal.. al. n. iv n C Second, the researcher and the English maintained a steady correspondence to h e n gteacher chi U share their findings and discussed students in which there were doubts until reaching. an agreement on how to treat the data. They individually analyzed the data to achieve an interrater reliability of 0.83. To address research question one: What critical events do the students in a Taiwanese elementary school experience when interacting with their international partners through weblogs and multimedia sources?, the researcher provided a general description of the critical events that happened during the project as the six students experienced them. Then using results from the above data analysis procedure, the researcher discussed the success and challenges and emotional changes the students 23.

(33) had as they interacted with international partners Through discussing the overview of the students’ behaviors in intercultural communication, there were some issues which emerged and needed to be further analyzed. Among the six students, there were three students who not only recorded their thinking about their learning process of intercultural communication more completely than the other three students but also respectively represented three different types of learning experience observed from the six students’ in this project. The three students’ complete and representative data led to the second research question: How do three students in a Taiwanese elementary school develop. 治政 intercultural competence through presenting their school 大 life to their foreign partners 立 through weblogs and multimedia sources? These three students’ experiences and ‧ 國. 學. reflections data were presented in chapter 4 separately through content analysis on the. ‧. observation of the researcher, individual performance on the blog, reflection journals,. sit. y. Nat. individual interviews. Besides, the three students’ result was analyzed under Byram’s. io. er. frameworks. The goal is to provide an account of how each of the three participants played a role in the critical events and how their intercultural competence developed.. al. n. iv n C As for the research question do their attitudes toward learning h three: e n gHow chi U. English change as they learn to discuss school life with international partners in the weblog and the online environment?, the researcher interpreted the result of the questionnaire on the three students’ attitude change toward learning English through communicating on the blog, and the follow-up interviews served as support to the interpretation and explanation of students’ attitudinal changes in the project. Finally, the researcher presented the challenges and successes that the students encountered during the project, from which conceptual implications or pedagogical suggestions were derived. Suggestions for further studies were also provided in Chapter 6. 24.

(34) As a summary of Chapter 3, it is clear that repeated patterns of teaching and research activities characterized the data collection and analysis procedure for this study. Teaching activities included how the teacher/researcher assisted students to complete a series of tasks while research activities include what and how the researcher collected and interpreted data. Detail activities for both are presented in the timeline (See Table 3.3) below. Table 3.3: Timeline of the intercultural project “A day at my school” Teaching Activities. Month. (Phase 3). 1.. io. 2.. Nat. Nov.. al. n. 3. Dec. (Phase 4). 1. 2.. 3. Jan. (Phase 5). 1. 2. 3.. ‧. 3.. 1. Students kept the reflection journal 2. Conducted the second interview 3. Observation and teacher’s log. Ch. engchi. Feb. ↓. 25. 1 . Students kept the reflection journal 2. Conducted the third interview 3. Observation and teacher’s log. y. 2.. 立. 學. (Phase 2). 1.. 政治大. 1. Students completed the background questionnaire 2. Conducted the first interview 3. Started the teacher’s log 4. Observation and teacher’s log. sit. Oct. 2.. Explained the intercultural project “ A day at my school” to students Students introduced themselves and got to know their international partners through practicing publishing the blog posts on the blog titled “A day at my school” Assisted students to discuss what they are going to do in the first topic: Learning courses. Assisted students to design, develop, and post the intercultural materials based on the topic, “Learning course” on the blog ‘A day at my school’ Assisted students to express their opinions on the blog ‘Research Diary’ Assisted students to discuss what they are going to do in the topic: Our lunch in school. Assisted students to design, develop, and post the intercultural materials based on the topic, “Our lunch in school” on the blog ‘A day at my school’ Assisted students to express their opinions on the blog ‘Research Diary’ Assisted students to discuss what they are going to do in the topic: “Extracurricular activities.” Assisted students to design, develop, and post the intercultural materials based on the topic, “Extracurricular activities.”” on the blog ‘A day at my school’ Assisted students to express their opinions on the blog ‘Research Diary’ Assist students to discuss what they are going to do in the topic: “School rules.” Assisted students to design, develop, and post the intercultural materials based on the topic, “School rules.” on the blog ‘A day at my school’ Assisted students to express their opinions on the blog ‘Research Diary’. er. (Phase 1). 1.. ‧ 國. Sep.. Research activities. i Un. v. 1. Observation and teacher’s log 2. Students kept the reflection journal 3. Conducted the fourth interview. 1. Observation and teacher’s log 2. Students kept the reflection journal 3. Conducted the fifth interview 4. Students completed Questionnaire of attitudes 5. Conducted the sixth interview 1. Transcribed the audiotape of interviews 2. Analyzed and coded the data collected from Sep. to Dec..

(35) CHAPTER 4 CRITICAL INCIDENT OVERVIEW AND INDIVIDUAL CASE This chapter consists of a description of the intercultural experience of six sixth graders in this project: Daphne, Teresa, Brian, Ryan, Larry and Ben. To better understand the development of these students’ intercultural understanding, there is a need to document how their intercultural competences evolved, how they presented their own culture to the international partners, and what were their reactions toward the critical incidents during the project. Critical incidents in this study refer to the distinct occurrence or events which are. 治政 neither negative nor positive but require some attention 大 and multiple interpretations 立 (Fitzgerald, 2001). These incidents can possibly facilitate students’ intercultural ‧ 國. 學. learning by fostering comparisons of different perspectives on the same issues, which. ‧. sometimes leads to change in students' views on other cultures (Műller-Hartmann,. sit. y. Nat. 2000). Another way to look into students’ intercultural learning is to analyze how they. io. er. reflected on the weblog intercultural learning. According to McAllister et al (2006), exploration of learners’ reflection upon critical incidents in intercultural practices can. al. n. iv n C offer a promising way in understanding of learners’ intercultural h e n gthecdevelopment hi U competences.. Besides, since the goal of the intercultural approach to English learning is to help students use English freely both in global and local contexts (Hung, 2006), it is necessary to analyze how this intercultural learning project on the blog helped students change their attitude toward learning English. Therefore, this chapter is divided into two sections and presented in the following order: (1) A general description of how students dealt with the critical incidents during the project, and (2) further analysis of three of the students’ intercultural experiences and their attitude change on English learning. 26.

(36) General description of critical incidents In order to provide an overview of what happened in this project, this section presents the major events which attracted most of the students’ attention or triggered discussions. The major events can be discussed at three stages of evolution. Though these stages are delineated as follows, in fact there was considerable overlap. In spite that different aspects of intercultural learning appeared in all parts of the projects, the stage model can help to understand how the process of dealing with these major issues had impact on the development of most students’ intercultural competences. The list of stages is outlined below, followed by more details in each stage.. Stage. 治政 Table 4.1.The critical incidents in the大 intercultural project 立 Time Major events 1. Expecting a closer relationship with international partners 2. Idealizing the international partners. 2. Phase 2: The students had more frequent interaction with their international partners as the students introduced their learning courses.. 1. Learning using different multimedia to clarify the international partners’ misunderstanding 2. Feeling the pressure of posting comments. y. sit. io. n. 3. Ch. er. Nat. al. ‧. ‧ 國. Phase1: The students started to know to their international partners.. 學. 1. i Un. v. i e n g c1.h Learning how to interact with. Phase 2-5 The students were more and more familiar with the blog environment. They also had in-depth thinking about the cultural differences and similarities in the school lunch, extracurricular activities, and school rules of different countries.. 2.. 27. international partners by observing other students’ intercultural communication process. Developing intercultural views through the practice of presumptions, challenge and new finding, and the discussion with local student.

(37) Stage 1: Expecting a closer relationship with international partners and idealizing them Expecting a closer relationship with partners At the beginning of the project, most of the students were excited about blogging with their international partners. For many of them, it was the first time they introduced themselves to international partners through multimedia applications. Thus, they did hope that their works could be noticed. Therefore, during Phase 1, when the students were required to introduce their own family backgrounds and what they liked to do in school through videos to their international partners, they took the task very. 治政 seriously because they hoped they could get their international partners’ feedback. 大立 Just as what they had expected, their introduction videos attracted many international ‧ 國. 學. partners’ positive comments. This made the students feel supported and believe that. ‧. they should respond to their international partners in the same way. For example, as. sit. y. Nat. the Italian teacher, Andrea, introduced his school through his students’ drawings, the. io. er. students here all gave Andrea such positive feedbacks as “I feel your student's picture is very interesting” (Blog comment by Larry on “A day at my school”, September 23,. al. n. iv n C 2008) and “Your school is cool”h(Blog comment by e n g c h i UTeresa on “A day at my school”, September 25, 2008).. When interacting with their American partners, the students were deeply impressed by their multimedia works on the blog. The American students used podcasts to introduce their family backgrounds, their hobbies and what they did during summer. The local students were very excited when hearing the podcasts because they could hear how American children really spoke. “It sounds like they are talking to us!” said Teresa when she heard the podcast (Teacher’s log, September 26, 2008). Therefore, they were very curious about the American partners. The local students not only disclosed their own interests but asked a lot of questions such as 28.

(38) “Our school has a school dog, called "Little White." Did your school have school animal, too?”(Blog comment by Daphne on “A day at my school”, September 25, 2008), and “Now I play Wii! Do you have Wii?” (Blog comment by Ryan on “A day at my school”, September 25, 2008). It was evident that the students had high motivation of developing closer relationships with their international partners. They did so by trying to find the connection between them and international partners. Idealizing their international partners In addition to having high interest in knowing their international partners and having the expectation of developing closer relationships with them, the local students. 治政 also tended to generalize the information they received 大 from the international partners 立 and such overgeneralization resulted in the idealization of their international partners. ‧ 國. 學. For example, when the students learnt how “peace” was promoted in Italian. ‧. education from the Italian teacher, Andrea, they soon formed a stereotype that Italy. sit. y. Nat. was a beautiful and well-organized country without any social problems. Daphne said,. io. er. “In Italy, everyone values '' peace'', they won't fight or argue.” (Blog comment by Daphne on “A day at my school”, September 28, 2008). At the same time, some of the. al. n. iv n C students presented their own Taiwanese in a negative way. h e n gculture chi U. Taiwan people usually have conflicts or [they] argue a lot, but [sic] not like Italian people, they can listen and make suggestions, so they don’t have arguments and conflicts, Italians are also very kind, very generous and has a lot of patience. (Blog comment by Brian on “A day at my school”, September 28, 2008) They told Andrea that, unlike Italy, people in Taiwan did not know how to get. along with each other peacefully. These students tried to use the negative image of Taiwan to emphasize the differences between Italy and Taiwan because at this point they naively believed that Italy was much better than Taiwan. But later on Andrea told the students in Taiwan their interpretation was not 29.

(39) accurate. On the blog he told them that in Italy, trash pollution and fighting were still the main problems needed to be solved. Andrea’s response to their interpretation made the students astonished but also motivated to reflect on their assumption toward Italy. Many of them, later in their discussion on “Research Dairy,” adjusted their stereotypes about Italy and said they were surprised that, just like Taiwan, Italy had lots of social problems, too (more about this in 4.1.3). To sum up, during Phase 1, the students were actively involved in developing intercultural communication with their international partners. In order to maintain communication and build closer connections with their international partners, the. 治政 students had developed some strategies, such as giving 大 positive comments, asking 立 questions and revealing their life experiences. It showed that the students hoped to be ‧ 國. 學. accepted by their partners and build intensive interaction with them. Even though they. ‧. formed some prejudicial interpretation about the international partners because they. sit. y. Nat. over relied on the limited cues of their partners’ posts, it was a good chance for them. io. al. er. to experience how their stereotypes were formed and then needed to be adjusted.. n. Stage 2: Learning how to interact with international partners and feeling the pressure of posting comments and. Ch. engchi. i Un. v. Using different ways to clarify international partners’ misunderstanding When the students had more frequent interaction with their international partners, they also faced their international partners’ misunderstanding that Taiwan was one of regions in China. The unpleasant feeling of being mistaken triggered the students’ strong motivation to explain the differences between Taiwan and China to their international partners in different ways. At Phase 2, when they introduced some cultural knowledge of Taiwan to their international partners, one American partner asked, “Aren’t China and Taiwan the same place?” (Blog comment by Cammi, October 2, 2008). The students were very upset about the question. They thought 30.