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Weekly UpdatesABSTRACT
Amongst the opportunities for cross-cultural contact created by the burgeoning use of the Internet are those provided by electronic discussion lists. This study looks at what happens when language students venture out of the classroom (virtual or otherwise) to participate in on-line discussion groups with native speakers. Responses to messages and commentary by moderators and other participants on the (in)appropriateness of contributions allow us to determine what constitutes successful participation and to make suggestions regarding effective teaching strategies for this medium.
A case study examines the threads started by four anglophone students of French when they post messages to a forum on the Web site of the French newspaper Le Monde. Investigation of these examples points to the ways in which electronic discussion inflects and is inflected by cultural and generic expectations. We suggest that successful participation on Internet fora depends on awareness of such cultural and generic mores and an ability to work within and/or with them. Teachers therefore need to find ways in which students can be sensitized to such issues so that their participation in such electronic discussion is no longer seen as linguistic training, but as engagement with a cultural practice.
A TALE (with apologies to Beatrix Potter)
Once upon a time there were four letter-writers and their names were Fleurie, Laura, Eleanor, and David. They hopped onto the Net from Britain and the USA and clicked their way across Le Monde (or more precisely, its on-line discussion pages). Fleurie and Eleanor, who were good little students, looked for pen-pals in order to improve their French, whereas Laura and David were much more concerned by vigorous debates about racism and cultural imperialism. In fact, David didn't even manage to write in French. Yet it was Laura and David who were warmly welcomed to stay and contribute, while Fleurie and Eleanor left, apparently discouraged.
As teachers of French, concerned to encourage use of that language by our students, this looks at first glance to be the kind of tale we would not want them to be reading. Our recalcitrant hero is not reprimanded--hardly an edifying moral conclusion--and dutifulness goes unrewarded. Why does the story end this way and what can be learnt from it?
In this article, we situate our case study in the wider context of task design of on-line activities. We then analyze the strategies and practices of the four message writers in order to derive lessons about the use of electronic discussion in language learning, lessons that underscore the crucial role of genre in intercultural communication.
THE BORDERLESS WORLD?
Language learning provides fertile ground for the co-existence of two contradictory views of Internet use. On the one hand, there is the idea of the borderless world where the Internet flattens out cultural difference. On the other hand, we continue to assert the existence of virtual boundaries: While the physical borders may be irrelevant, the Internet is the superhighway into the heart of another culture, giving instant access to difference. When we send off our students via modem to practice their French in an electronic discussion forum, the contradiction gets played out as follows: We have deceptively easy access to our linguistic and cultural other, but this other is assumed to be doing the same thing as we are (discussion) only in French. The ways in which electronic discussion may be inflected by cultural and generic expectations risk being ignored.
We have reason to be suspicious of the assumption of the flattening out of cultural difference. Although Internet fora notionally transcend national and cultural boundaries, as soon as communication occurs, cultural practices are necessarily activated. Thus, while participants in a given discussion list view it as a forum for debate, their notions of what constitutes acceptable forms of debate may differ according to cultural affiliations. Wider cultural patterns in rhetorical ploys (Smith, 1987), explicitness of communication (Gallois & Callan, 1997), use of irony and humor, repertoires of textual features available for pastiche (such as Beatrix Potter's tale of "good little rabbits"), as well as strategies for engaging in cross-cultural communication (Freadman, 1999) will come into play. In this way, French participants are likely to apply expectations regarding other forms of intellectual debate (such as the use of cultural allusions and "provocation," as we shall see in our examples). However these wider cultural patterns are necessarily adapted to this particular cultural practice or genre--electronic discussion--a genre with its own technical constraints (length, speed of reply, formatting) and discursive/rhetorical conventions (such as the use of emoticons, quotations from other participants, etc.). These conventions may vary culturally but also from site to site (subculturally).
We may therefore assume that any electronic discussion group potentially brings together participants with divergent expectations of what appropriate behaviour in a site of public discussion might be. It follows that in order to ensure the continued functioning of the group, mechanisms exist for dealing with such inter-cultural (or inter-subcultural) differences. The most visible of these we shall call "moderation." This term commonly denotes intervention by an official moderator to deal with unsuitable messages; however, commentary by other participants (self-appointed moderators) on the appropriateness of contributions may fulfil a very similar function. In such cases, the official moderator is not alone in monitoring the list, initiating new members, or attempting to exclude inappropriate behaviour, and for this reason we shall use the term moderation broadly to cover official and unofficial intervention. (2)
Through both of these forms of moderation, questions regarding suitability are raised and dealt with at regular intervals, and various justifications are offered for treating contributions as acceptable or otherwise. In a forum where this policing of appropriate behaviour is carried out with a minimum of congeniality, moderation can function as a kind of initiation or indeed informal teaching. In this way, the Internet discussion forum offers a potentially privileged site for students to get individual feedback on their performance from people other than the teacher. The question is how to optimize this potential. What do we need to teach our students, and how do we need to frame an activity, in order for it to result in learning? This we will address through our case study of an on-line forum attached to the Web site of the quality French daily broadsheet Le Monde. However, let us first situate our inquiry by examining the kinds of online activities proposed to language teachers for use with their classes.
On-Line Activities for Language Learning
The use of e-mail exchange to improve language skills is widely recognized and a number of texts are devoted to finding "keypals" for students and promoting student-student correspondence (Boswood, 1997; Rice, 1996; Warschauer, 1995a, 1995b, 1995c). As the name suggests, sometimes these keypal partnerships are merely a technologically sophisticated version of a long-standing epistolary form. O'Dowd (2001) reminds us of the importance of "pedagogically sound approaches to intercultural email exchanges which incorporate the activities fully into the curriculum as opposed to treating them as superficial pen-pal exercises." In other words, as Candlin and Murphy argued in 1987 and Muller-Hartmann reminded us in 2000, in the context of e-mail exchange, task design is crucial.
Although the vast majority of activities described focus on the exchange of personal messages by keypals, the personal need not inevitably become the task. Various authors describe email activities that go beyond the trading of information about siblings, tastes, and hobbies to produce a collaborative student newspaper (Barson, 1991), to analyze a comparative community survey (Sayers, 1993), or to discuss literature (Muller-Hartmann, 2000), film (Kinginger, Gourves-Hayward, & Simpson, 1999), current affairs (Chen, 1998), or history (Kern, 1996). Discussion tasks are thus a feature of some pedagogical uses of e-mail exchange.
The use of discussion lists is also proposed, somewhat less frequently, and like the keypal exchanges, the lists recommended tend to be restricted to learners only (Boswood, 1997; Rice, 1996; Warschauer, 1995b, 1995c). Very few activities suggested in connection with discussion lists provide occasions for students to participate alongside native speakers (Paramskas, 1995, and Cononelos & Oliva, 1993, are notable exceptions). Furthermore, topics for discussion are frequently determined by the teacher or list coordinator. In other words, despite the promise of the Internet to "connect learners with authentic culture" and serve as "a gateway to the virtual foreign world where 'real people' are using real language in 'real context'" (Osuna & Meskill, 1998), discussion activities--whether email exchange or discussion lists--are often limited to teacher-determined topics and the cultural comfort zone of student-student interaction. The activities are geared to student needs (obviously an advantage for beginners) but do not challenge more advanced students to cope in situations not specifically designed for their benefit. Students are still safely within the classroom, virtual though it might be, and despite its advantages, it suffers the limitations of any language classroom in providing genuine opportunities to engage with the "target culture" in roles other than that of student. (3)
The other important point to note in relation to the activities proposed is that discussion list tasks tend not to be clearly differentiated from keypal tasks. The topics put forward are comparable, and in particular, the personal is once again at the fore: Discussion is frequently presumed to start with the exchange of personal information. Comparing, for instance, the suggestions of Gunske von Kolln and Gunske von Kolln (1997) for the bilingual discussion forum and for e-mail partnerships, we find that the activity procedure is virtually the same in each case: (a) subscribe, (b) send a message introducing yourself, (c) communicate regularly. (4) There is no sense that a conversation between two people is different from a public discussion. And in both cases the personal is the topic of entry.
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