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Online Intercultural Communication between Chinese and American College Students

Online Intercultural Communication between Chinese and American College Students. Objective.

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Online Intercultural Communication between Chinese and American College Students

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  1. Online Intercultural Communication between Chinese and American College Students

  2. Objective • This project links technology, theory, pedagogical design, and practical experience, all of which assist in fostering intercultural communication and critical thinking and in building intercultural learning networks between classes in CUMTB and Penn State

  3. The Process of Two-semester Online Intercultural Communication Step 1Establishing the Personal Connection Theoretical Basis:The personal connection is invaluable to this project because it permits the students to establish a close tie with someone from the other culture in order to foster cultural understanding.

  4. Subjects • 5--10 Chinese college students from different majors and the same number of American students as volunteers to participate in this program. It is important for it to be a 1:1 ratio.

  5. Activity • The Chinese students will establish their respective blogs on www.renren.com (a Chinese campus net similar to facebook) on which students’ pictures appear along with their self- portraits.

  6. American students may visit their pen pals’ blog and make friends with them through written chat, or vice versa. (Chinese students may also view the blog in their partner’s facebook and add comments to it.)

  7. Exchanges between them during this stage are typically personal in nature, which mainly deal with their hobbies, interests and study, and are written in half in English and half in Chinese.

  8. Assignments and Assessment • Clear guidelines should be given about how often students should post, how long the post should be, how many hyperlinks should be included in each post, what is appropriate to write and how to avoid temptation of plagiarism.

  9. Step 2 In-depth Understanding about Target Cultures • Theoretical Basis: Built on mutual trust, a common course schedule (same themes and similar linguistic notions) can be shared, allowing students to develop their linguistic, cultural, and analytical learning with their partners. In this stage exchanges between key pals are mainly academic in nature.

  10. Activities • Instructors from both universities will help students to determine topics which reflect the interests and concerns of the learners, such as typical campus conversations, activities, travel, sports, movies, pop music, education, happiness, love, ecology, employment and have an approved list to choose from. Once a topic is selected, a variety of activities will be designed to develop the linguistic skill and cultural awareness.

  11. For Beginners • Students can read blogs related to the topic from the approved list about the target culture in English and Chinese or track photo logs (flogs), which is not typically available in the textbook, and then are required to post their comments.

  12. Students can create and publish their own oral podcasts in Chinese or English on a subject of their choice, dealing with some aspect of Chinese or American culture, which will be shared on the blog with their key pals, who might give some valuable peer suggestions for improvement in terms of tone, intonation, stress and idea.

  13. Students will be assigned some simple synchronous on-line chatting tasks in Chinese or English through MSN, such as inquiring about one typical day on campus of their partner with the use of appropriate tense, their views about the target culture or guess the names of celebrities in the target culture. It should be pointed that the written record of these chatting tasks should be printed and shared with their classmates and teachers.

  14. For Intermediate Students • Students could consult flogs to practice writing descriptions, noting their observations in their own blogs. • To have two foreign language classes exchange blog address and read and comment on one another’s blogs. Every week a different student could be responsible for writing the blog post for the class. Class could have access to posts from all the students in the class as well as the opportunity to respond to anyone in the class.

  15. For Advanced Students • Building on the collaborative nature of the wiki, the cultural projects are varied • Students in both universities can collaborate to plan a target culture travel. • Students in both universities can create a book club suitable for each other for reading and discussion .

  16. Students in both universities can survey on college students' view on employment or friends-making patterns (or any interesting or practical cultural topic) by interviewing their key pals via on-line chatting. And then they will study these statistics or cases very carefully and find the gender and cultural differences in the view on these two aspects. Finally, each team is supposed to post their findings or analysis of the reasons on the intercultural communication wiki page.

  17. Students in both universities can complete and share their film projects (4-5minutes), which introduce CUMTB and Penn State in English or Chinese or the creative short plays filmed by themselves via wiki. They may be trained on how to edit videos with movie-maker by peers or instructors.

  18. Assignments and Assessment • It is also crucial for teachers to communicate their expectations for each assignment and to decide ahead of time how each assignment will be graded. • Will communication take place exclusively in the target language or both the target language and native language? • What criteria will be used to grade assignments?

  19. Assessment can also be done by peers or oneself. Learners can reflect on how well the team works, how they feel about their work and progress and what skills and knowledge they are gaining. Questionnaires, checklists or essays can help learners do this by inviting them to reflect critically on the skills and knowledge they are gaining .

  20. Step 3 Video Chatting (Skype) or Visiting the Other • Theoretical Basis: Engaging students in real-time conversations is an exciting and motivating task that brings the language and culture to life, gives it purpose, and creates a reason to develop intercultural sensitivity and understanding. This stage helps them to apply the grammar and vocabulary studied during the week, which is integrated with the cultural theme.

  21. Activities • Students converse in real time approximately twice a month with their peers across the Atlantic. A webcam and microphone are set up so that students can both send and receive video and audio. Students come to class having prepared questions based on readings and class discussions relating to a cultural theme. They chat for approximately 25 minutes in Chinese and 25 minutes in English. If possible, the academic year closes with an opportunity for students to visit the other country and observe what has been discussed during the year.Maybe it’s more realistic and interesting for American students to visit Beijing and feel the combination of modern and ancient civilization of China .

  22. Suggestions for On-line Intercultural Communication • Aligning Academic Calendars • Partner teachers should align their calendars before the start of the academic year. Scheduled scholarly breaks and vacations, as well as national holidays and differences in time zone should be taken into consideration as teachers set up their academic timeline for projects.

  23. Logistics and Technological constraints • From a more logistical standpoint, it is necessary to spend time before starting the project to establish topics, install and test equipment for both written and video chat, guide students to set up their blogs, wiki, create podcasts and do in-class chat, and plan dates for video chat and a trip to visit the partner class. If online collaboration can be arranged, a private room equipped with computers for the live chat is ideal.

  24. References • Anderson, L.L.(2010). What in the Wiki? Available: http://www.frenchteachers.org/technology/includes/extras/what_in _the_wiki.html • Ducate, L.C. & Lomicka, L.L .(2005) Exploring the Blogosphere: Use of Web Logs in the Foreign Language Classroom. Foreign Language Annals; Fall, 410-420

  25. Moss, D& Duzer, C.V. (2010). Project-Based Learning for Adult English Language Learners. Available: http://www.cal.org/caela/esl_resources/digests/ProjBase.html • Project Work: CALPER. (2010). How Do Teachers Implement Project-based Learning in their Classrooms? Available: http://calper.la.psu.edu/projectwork/examples.php • Stanley, G. (2006). Podcasting: Audio on the Internet Comes of Age. TESL-EJ; March, 9 (4) 1-7 • From Intercultural Exchange and CMC: A Telecollaborative Intercultural Project (printed by Nikki, the instructor in IECP, Penn State)

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