Intercultural intertexts encountered by Taiwanese EFL students

Abstract

This paper reports on an exploratory study of one specific aspect of intercultural literacy: the activation of intercultural intertexts. Readers of intercultural intertexts fall into two general groups: knowing readers (who know the source text) and unknowing readers (who do not know the source text). This paper aims to explore Taiwanese unknowing students' responses to Western-derived allusive intertexts. Eight instances of intercultural intertexts were drawn systematically from the article titles of the British magazine spiked for 16 Taiwanese college students to read, who had a required level of proficiency to skim spiked articles. Qualitative data about their reactions to the intertexts were drawn for analysis from semi-structured one-on-one interviews. In addition, the eight magazine articles were taught to 82 Taiwanese unknowing students without a required level of proficiency. A brief questionnaire was then conducted to probe into their motivations to learn intercultural intertexts. The results show that the interviewees generally felt positively about the intertexts and that most of the interviewees and questionnaire respondents were motivated to learn such intertexts. The findings indicate that it is not only theoretically but also practically worthwhile to inquire further into unknowing readers' responses to and interest in learning intercultural intertexts.