This study investigates the effects of using open social VR for university English as a foreign language (EFL) learners' intercultural communication learning. The project involved two stages: (1) carefully designed activities for students to practice different language-learning tasks with their peers; (2) implemented in an open social VR…

An Activity Theory framework has been increasingly applied for understanding the tension or contradictions in telecollaboration. However, to date, few researchers have applied it to the analysis of digital stories, and none of them, to our knowledge, have used it to analyze the co-creation of multilingual digital stories. In this study, we explore…

This study examines if and how collaboration and intercultural learning took place during telecollaboration by exploring the linguistic features of the discourse used by the participants, as well as the patterns and types of interactions between intercultural interlocutors. EFL students in Taiwan were paired up with pre-service teacher education…

This study presents findings on the efficacy of an online learning environment developed to foster EFL students' intercultural competence via reading articles on topics of their own culture and communicating their responses with speakers of another culture. The project offered opportunities for EFL students to use their own societal and cultural…

Efforts have been made by language educators and researchers to use computer technology to assist L2 learners' growth in either linguistic or intercultural competence. Nonetheless, web-based environments devoted to developing both types of competences in tandem are new and experimental. The purpose of this project, which involves the collaboration…

Examines the cultural dimension involved in the e-mail correspondence between university English-as-a-foreign-language students in Taiwan and pre-service bilingual English-as-a-Second-Language teachers in the United States. E-mail entries and end-of-project reports were analyzed to yield insights into the cross-cultural information transmitted and…

A study investigated the communication strategies used by students of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in electronic mail interactions with native speakers of English. Subjects were 22 university students in Taiwan paired with a like number of pre-service EFL teacher trainees in the United States. The discourse of 87 e-mail entries by the…