ONLINE COLLABORATIVE WRITTEN ACTIVITIES IN L2 FOR THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Ioanna Tyrou

doi:10.46827/ejfl.v5i4.3744

Abstract

This study investigates the potential affordances of new technologies and the opportunities offered by wikis in facilitating L2 collaborative writing in university settings for the teaching of culture. Participants were 92 undergraduate students of Italian as foreign language in the department of Italian Language and Literature of the university of Athens. They attended and participated in a laboratory course of alternative culture environments and online activities in foreign language. A task-based wiki environment managed to involve the students in a variety of online activities culturally meaningful and authentic educational activities. An initial and a final questionnaire were selected and analysed by ANOVA and POST HOC TEST (Tukey) confirming that online collaborative wikis tools are able to promote teamwork, can increase knowledge of culture and foreign language and can create positive conditions for cultivating creativity and collaborative, written expression.  Article visualizations:<img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0750/a.php" alt="Hit counter" />

Highlights

Wiki-mediated L2 collaborative writingCopyright © The Author(s)
In the questionnaire given before the start of the laboratory courses, we tried to assess the students' beliefs about the usefulness of New Technologies in the process of learning a foreign language and their impact on the familiarity with the foreign culture
Variance Analysis (ANOVA) was used to test the statistical significance of the different answers given in the question of what can be achieved through computer-based teaching

Summary

Introduction

Ioanna Tyrou ONLINE COLLABORATIVE WRITTEN ACTIVITIES IN L2 FOR THE TEACHING OF LANGUAGE AND CULTURE combine different elements, materials and technologies, they can increase their creativity and 21st century literacies, linguistic and non-linguistic, (Castañeda, 2013), and the attention to language forms and discourse, such as lexis and grammatical accuracy and discourse (DiCamilla & Anton, 1997). William (2012) insists that writing can facilitate knowledge creation by presenting studies which demonstrate that the new knowledge creation is prompted by collaborative tasks that involve writing. Research on second language acquisition (Murray, 2005) shows that collaboration, through online activities (such as project-based and learning task-based activities) between students facilitates language acquisition. Interaction develops and evolves the intercultural competence approach. Storch (2013) has clarified as true collaborative writing activities when participants work together and interact throughout the writing process, and when the product is a co-owned and jointly produced text that cannot be reduced to the separate input of individuals

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