Foreign Language Learning: Developing cultural skills for online discussions

In the fall of 2007, I visited a rural, North Carolina high school with my colleague Ann Marie Gunter from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction.  The purpose of our visit was to conduct a site visit of the implementation of an online Mandarin Chinese language course being offered for the first time.  We spoke with three students who were enrolled in Level One of the course.  Two of these students were partially motivated to take the course because they had already explored Japanese online, teaching themselves some of the language.  When the opportunity to enroll in this course was presented, they felt a strong desire to pursue their interests in Asian culture even though the course was not Japanese.

On the drive home that afternoon, we pondered the agency of these students who sought opportunities for linguistic and cultural engagement through the Japanese course, outside of what their school could offer.  We discussed the implications of student access to language and culture via the Internet: access to current information and access to speakers of the target language.  We wondered what challenges, advantages, and phenomenon are now important considerations for the classroom teacher, whose students can participate both linguistically and culturally, of their own accord, in online venues where the target language is used.  In other words, how does student engagement in authentic opportunities where they must use skills and knowledge of the target language and culture impact teaching pracatice?  For example, students might participate in an online discussion forum, compete in an online game with their counterparts from another country, or learn to speak some of the target language from online tutorials where they can see and hear the language.

I was recently reminded of this conversation as I read A funny thing happened on the way to the forum: Electronic discussion and foreign language learning (http://llt.msu.edu/vol7num1/hanna/default.html), an article published in the online journal Language Teaching & Technology.  Here, the authors present a study that explored the involvement of four students in online discussion forums hosted by Le Monde, the French national newspaper.  Unlike email listservs or discussion lists, participation in an online forum like the one hosted by Le Monde is not teacher-generated and controlled, nor is it teacher-centered.  And because the students in this study participated of their own volition, their participation was more task-oriented, i.e., authentic discussion of a particular topic, versus the linguistic practice we might normally seek for our students.

An intriguing outcome of the analysis of student participation in this study was the recognition that the discussions were inflected by culturally bound understandings of what constitutes a conversation.  In this case, the interactions took the form of a debate, where participants provoked one another, often invoking cultural referents like statements made by historical figures.  Similarly, participants were subject to the norms and guidelines for participating in an electronic forum of this nature.  Ultimately, participants negotiated two cultures: the genre of electronic discussion and the culture of the target language, in this case -- French popular culture.  How do our students develop the intercultural competence to participate in these environments?

The article highlights a number of important considerations for language teachers that were not even “on our radar” when we were prepared to teach a world language.  Among these:

• How do we provide students with opportunities to practice cultural skills, not merely learn about them?
• When we engage students in electronic exchanges, do we pay attention to not only conventions for using the target language, but also conventions for electronic interaction?
• How do we help students negotiate communication with native speakers using both the target language AND their native language?
• How do we identify appropriate online opportunities for students to practice what they’ve learned?
• Because online forums and social networks are constantly changing in membership and culture, what guidance do we offer our students who want to participate in such dynamic environments?
• What are the stakes of student participation in forums dominated by speakers of the target culture?  How might they be perceived as non-native speakers?
• What does successful participation in an online forum look like?

I would encourage you to read this article.  Even if you do not choose to do so, what are you thoughts about the questions raised by this article and by the ability of our students to participate culturally outside of the classroom?  To share your thoughts, please visit the forum topic Developing cultural skills for online discussions, in the Teaching and Learning forum of this site.