Promoting cross-cultural understanding and language use in research-oriented Internet-mediated intercultural exchange

Abstract

This case study investigated the effectiveness of the United Beyond Our Diversity (UBOD) project for the development of language skills and intercultural communicative competence (including attitudes, knowledge, skills, and critical intercultural awareness) in Taiwanese seventh grade learners. The learners’ attitudes and evaluations of UBOD were also examined. The research-based intercultural exchange project of UBOD 12-15 was designed to develop learners’ critical cultural awareness and to facilitate authentic interactions by engaging students in making deep cross-cultural inquiries. The UBOD 12-15 project, created by the Global Teenager Project, connected participants from five different countries with the help of a Wiki platform and a Moodle, which was used as an intra-class interaction tool. Qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect and analyze the data. The findings suggested that the research-based UBOD had a significant impact on the development of the learners’ critical cultural awareness and foreign language use; in particular, this project encouraged intrinsically motivated cross-cultural learning and, further, led the learners to discard their cultural stereotypes and view others from a different perspective.