NNS-NNS Online Intercultural Communication: A Sustainable Practice to Teach Global English and Develop Intercultural Communicative Competence

Abstract

The rise of English as a global language implies a paradigm shift for English Language Teaching (ELT) in non-English-speaking countries. The use of English for intercultural communication between speakers of other languages poses a great challenge to the traditional EFL native-speaker (NS) norms and targets. In most cases, English teachers in expanding-circle countries connected electronically with teachers in native-speaking countries so that their students could mimic or learn from their native-speaking peers. But English learners' confidence and identity might be undermined by the unequal power relationship. Thus, to prevent linguistic re-colonization and better prepare students for future intercultural communications, most of which take place among nonnative speakers (NNS), incorporating communications between NNS into ELT should be a beneficial and meaningful option. This study reports a NNS-NNS epal (email partner) project in which twenty-three university students from Taiwan and Turkey each learned about different cultures while practicing their English through emails. Students' Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC), perceptions on the roles of English and their confidence in English were explored from their email correspondences and final reflections. The results show that most students had to overcome their mental blocks at the beginning to get used to using English as a communication tool and learn to comprehend imperfect and invented English usages. Such an epal project helped students learn how to use English in lingua franca settings, which traditional ELT instructions seldom provide.