A REVIEW ON “ARTIFACTS AND CULTURES-OF-USE IN INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION”

( Thorne, 2003, Language Learning & Technology,7 (2), pp. 38-67)

 

Based on the description of three case studies, Thorne discusses participants’ attitudes and use of internet communication by means of e-mail and instant chat mainly. He elaborates about learners’ opportunities to build intercultural and communicative competence within the framework of telecollaboration projects.

In the first case, learners from The U.S.A paired up with students in France. They all were involved in preparatory activities to plan on the cultural issues that would be discussed. They decided to explore issues around the life of young people in gangs, however, this resulted in conflict. In trying to explain about the violence in certain parts of their cities, they compared situations in the two countries. Since they drew from the knowledge they had of this countries based on mass media, it seems their interpretations were not completely accurate and welcomed. This kind of difficulty matches what I typically as a Colombia experience when people depicts my country as full of drug dealers and guerrillas. Unfortunately the news and even soap operas, in some cases, produced by companies in my own nation, expand this image of the events there.

In addition, another intercultural conflict in the project arose from the particular style participants from each country reveled when they answered e-mails. The French being more formal wrote in a distant essay style and the U.S .A learners used more dialogue and phatic-oriented fashion. The extent to which participants have been socialized into the global internet communication community shaped their knowledge to interact through e-mails. Being more novel in the use of this technology, the French transferred the regular skills they used in academic settings, which was supposed to be the aim of the exchange. The U.S.A students construct their discourse based on the more global, popular, informal and phatic style that younger crowds assume on the internet.  Apparently, they expected to build friendship with their foreign peers.

At the level of implications, personally, I do not think the first kind of conflict, participants’ unhappiness in regard to the appreciation the others revealed of their country, constitute a challenge exclusively related to internet communication.  As I exemplified with my own experience, we all tend to build cultural images of other countries or communities rooted on serotypes fed from different sources. It is precisely the opportunity to engage in discussion with native speakers or experts in another culture, and to share our supposed knowledge and understanding what can allow us to gain objective perspectives. A painful process, I can say from what I have lived, but necessary to educate ourselves and others. In the second kind of conflict, the author brings about the misbalance learners might face in regard to the opportunities they count with to approach learning on the internet. Therefore, the success of these projects depends greatly on participants’ counting with the necessary resources to access the internet in a suitable way.

The second study describes a tellecollaboration situation, again in the context of two groups of students from the U.S.A and France. It centers on the interaction of a pair of learners whose agency in achieving on line communication guided their efforts. The authors claimed that the female participant evolved from a stage of frustration to one of comfort, from an outsider perspective to one of complete involvement; “she passed over the threshold” (Taken from Wegerif,1998) . The substance of the analysis lays on the two learners voluntarily transition from e-mail (Asynchronous exchanges), which was the arrangement in the project, to on-line (Synchronous e-mail). Their decision reveals the power of personal styles in the selection that learners make to engage on internet communication with academic purposes. The great enthusiasm of participants and their extended interaction in online chatting, out of the academic institutional arrange which was set, led investigators to pose questions in regard to the effectiveness of the exchange as a framework to increase pragmatic, cultural and linguistic competence.. Data showed that at least one of the participants revealed progress in these aspects.

In addition, the peer interaction social ecology (rom Belz and Kinginger, 2002, as cited by Thorne) created a favorable environment which reduced tension, anxieties and increased positive affective factors as confidence.  These elements supported learning. On the whole, this study draws on the concept of “ hyperpersonal interaction” (from Walther (1996, as cited by Thorne) as the quick intimate relation that participants in asynchronous and synchronous environments develop with peers; in this case,  participants have never met each other and they belonged to other cultures. At the end, this seems to be in favor of the educational goals we might have in the context of foreign language learning.

The third case was called “The Wrong Tool for the Right Job?”. Young adults involve in this project felt attracted towards the telecollaboration idea of the project, but they were not comfortable with the kind of internet interaction plan for it. The artifact investigators incorporated as the means for communication between French and U.S.A students were mainly e-mail and teleconferencing. A good number of The U.S.A students started using e-mail and then used an instant chat service they enjoyed more. In an extreme case, one of them refused to participate if she had to use e-mail. The researchers describe the participants as people who had accumulated a great deal experience in the use of the internet. Even more, these young adults had developed particular uses for particular internet communication artifacts. For instance, e-mail was more related to communication with authority figures (parents and teachers) while instant chatting to interaction with friends since it allowed them more instant communication. This previous experience and their acquisition of habits seemed to challenge the “top down structure” in which the pedagogical design of the telecolaboration project was  structured.

As a teacher in this field, I can observe benefits and challenges implied in the three projects the author described. Telecollaboration projects imply genuine language practice opportunities for learners. From what I noticed, I can conclude that the progress participants can gain would depend on various factors. To begin with, the conditions to access and control the artifacts being used should not be dramatically different in the participating groups. The design of these studies needs to consider participants’ preferences and habits in using the various possibilities of communicative tools which are suitable for telecollaboration projects. If they feel comfortable there will be more chances that they form real learning partnerships with their overseas peers. Thus, the rapport they establish can lead them to adopt positive psychological attitudes and to work more independently; the latter implies increasing their responsibility in their own learning.

Allowing more freedom to students to control aspects in their interaction with their international peers might probably also contribute in looking at new choices to sort out intercultural problems. Building artificial spaces to get strangers to discuss cultural issues from their countries constitutes in itself a high risk for misunderstanding and the crash of susceptibilities. If participants are allowed to find their own ways to approach each other, which probably implies in the first place to know each other for a while, intercultural understanding and learning might have more chances for success. More than any other communication possibility the internet has come to mean openness, independence, possibilities and control for users. No doubt these characteristics of the internet, which our students have adopted, question the coherence of our pedagogical designs on the lights of these digital technologies in communication.