An asynchronous CMC project: The “Euro e-pals” Vlachos Kosmas

The participating schools A class of 20 students from the 9 th Primary school of Zografou in Athens, Greece. A class of 20 students from the C.P. San Agustin Primary school from Tenerife in Spain. A class of 20 students from the Primary school of the University of Johensuu in Savonlinna, Finland.

The conducted research Asynchronous online collaboration was regularly and systematically integrated into the foreign language program of the three classes of learners. Collaboration lasted for two consecutive school years. Seven project cycles were completed. The stages of each cycle are described in slides

Collaboration patterns The participating learners, in groups of 3-4 children: 1.collaborated online, 2.exchanged cultural information, 3.expressed ideas, feelings and attitudes and 4.negotiated meanings with the aim of creating electronic texts that were published on a web site, which had been specifically constructed by the researcher to facilitate the learners’ online interaction.

The Home page of the web site

The seven project cycles that were completed 1.“Making friends, introducing ourselves and our school” 1.“Making friends, introducing ourselves and our school” (January– February 2004) 2.“How do you celebrate Easter?” 2.“How do you celebrate Easter?”(March-April 2004) 3.“The Olympic Games” 3.“The Olympic Games”(May-June) 4.“The Environment” 4.“The Environment” (October-November 2004) 5.“Christmas traditions in different parts of Europe” 5.“Christmas traditions in different parts of Europe” (December 2004-January 2005) 6.“Providing an ending to a story” 6.“Providing an ending to a story” (February- March 2005) 7.“Health habits at school and at home” 7.“Health habits at school and at home” (March – May 2005)

Each project cycle included the production of two electronic texts:project cycle 1.Electronic letters presenting information regarding ones’ own culture The groups of learners composed letters which conveyed cultural information. The texts, which included animated graphics and photos, were corrected by peer groups, edited and uploaded in “The Euro e-pals” website. The letters can be found in the “Learners’ forum” link. 2.Electronic reports comparing ones’ own culture with other cultures The groups reported the information they had collected through the online communication and commented on the similarities and differences between their culture and the cultures of their overseas partners. The reports can be found in the “Schools magazine” link.

The teaching of the project cycles For the teaching of each one of the project cycles and the effective organization of the asynchronous communication, a learning-teaching framework was created. The framework, which was named as “The Framework of Intercultural Asynchronous Online Communication” (IAOC framework), was founded on Willis’ (1996) Task-Based Learning Framework. Each project cycle was designed by the researcher and taught by the participating teachers following the three stages of the IAOC framework. The stages of the framework included: 1.the preparation of the learners, 2.the exchange of the electronic letters and the synthesis of the reporting texts, 3.a language focus stage.

The IAOC Framework:1st stage (preparation) In this stage the learners carried out communicative activities within the borders of their classroom, being prepared for the online communication which was to follow. The researcher created learning materials that were available online in the web site and taught by the three participating teachers. The materials focused on the topic of the project cycle that was being taught and presented vocabulary and structures that were meant to be used by the learners throughout their online interaction, which was to follow.

The IAOC Framework: 2nd stage (online communication) The second stage included two sub stages. 1.The composition & the exchange of the electronic letters (Learners’ forum) electronic letters 2.The production and publication of the reports (Schools’ magazines)reports Both the electronic texts and the reports were published in “The Euro e-pals” website“The Euro e-pals” website

The IAOC Framework: 3rd stage (language focus) The learners looked critically at some linguistic elements used at the second stage and made observations as concerns their function in the linguistic system and/or their function in communication. They also practiced words, phrases and patterns from the analysis activities to build accuracy & confidence

Some Findings

Opportunities for consolidating and expanding the linguistic items, vocabulary & language functions the learners had been taught in their everyday, non electronic lessons All three participating teachers commented that the exchange of texts and feedback through the computer, peer correction and collaborative editing were eventually so effective that teachers themselves did not need to interfere at the editing stage of both the letters and the reports.

From the statistic analysis we made, we concluded that at the end of the experiment the 95% of the learners involved developed awareness regarding the areas they usually made mistakes and developed cognitive and metacognitive strategies that helped them overcome difficulties in expression.

From the qualitative analysis of the produced texts we came to the conclusion that learners developed a ‘trainer-trainee’ relationship as they had the chance to teach their overseas peers and at the same time to be taught. The Finnish learners were taught for the first time the use and usage of the Simple Past from the Greek texts they received and processed. The Greek learners had the chance to practice further the Simple Past they had already been taught at their everyday lessons and raise awareness concerning the mistakes they usually made.

All three teachers reported that their learners learnt new lexical items from the electronic texts they received but also from the texts they processed at the 1 st stage of the IAOC stage. As all teachers commented, online communication offered the learners the opportunity to experiment with the language and practice the new words they learnt as they wanted to produce texts that would include a large amount of interesting meanings.

Opportunities for developing communicative writing skills Having processed the questionnaires learners and teachers answered as well as the texts learners produced, we concluded that: 90% of the participating learners at the end of “The Euro e-pals” were able to make appropriate selections across the genres, text types and register they had been taught and used.

The learners realized that appropriate selections made online interaction more effective since communication codes and good relationships among the partners were preserved. They soon became familiar with: 1.interpreting and selecting graphics, 2.using texts they had been taught or had received as examples, 3.organizing content in paragraphs and 4.moving forward and backwards in the stages of process writing with the aim of producing projects that would facilitate intercultural communication.

Opportunities for developing awareness across: their native language & culture, the English language & culture and their interlocutors’ mother tongues & cultures From the reports of the participating teachers we concluded that the learners used both L1 and L2 to communicate among each other on a local level and L2 to communicate with their partners from the other European schools on a cross cultural level. They usually went through an L1 and L2 brainstorming stage, which acted as a transition period, before they moved to the L2 production or the text synthesis stage. In the brainstorming stage they resorted to both languages to make semantic and morphological comparisons across L1 and L2. In the text synthesis stage, based on the comparisons they had attempted in the brainstorming stage, they composed texts which mediated and brought into contact their people, language, culture and civilization with their partners’ cultures, ways of life and native languages.

Analysing the data we collected, we concluded that while collaborating on a local level, “The Euro e-pals” learners took into serious consideration the cultural and linguistic otherness of their interlocutors. They kept in mind that that their interlocutors originated from diverse cultural and national backgrounds, had been brought up in dissimilar natural environments, spoke different L1s and, therefore, had disparate perceptions of the world. The participating teachers observed that in the composing and revising phases of the text synthesis stage the learners progressively became aware of the fact that they could make language mistakes, while expressing themselves in L2, misled by the syntactical patterns, the word order, the notions and the functions of their L1s.

From the data we collected it also follows that cross cultural online collaboration not only exhorted the participating learners to delve into the linguistic systems of L1 and L2 and observe their functions, but also motivated them to speculate the systems of the native languages of their partners overseas in order that, as writers, they could be effective in intercultural communication. The Greek teacher who participated in our research commented that while selecting a folk story to narrate to their European partners, the Greek learners communicated with their interlocutors abroad and investigated whether in the Finnish language nouns have gender suffixes, as they do in the Greek language.

From a sociolinguistic point of view, the teachers’ comments prove that learners formed working hypotheses concerning not only the linguistic systems of their interlocutors’ mother tongues but also the appropriate use of social and linguistic codes and norms that were common and acceptable in the cultures and the communities in which the intended readers belonged to. In the process of cross cultural online collaboration learners explored these hypotheses and expanded them, forming new ones. They compared genres and linguistic and social codes across L1 and L2 and they wondered what genres and codes would be used in their interlocutors’ mother tongues and languages.

Conclusion When online networking is systematically integrated in the foreign language curriculum, learners are given ample opportunities for: 1.consolidating and expanding the linguistic items and functions they have been taught in their everyday lessons, 2.developing communicative writing skills, 3.developing awareness across: their native language and culture, the language and culture of the target language and their interlocutors’ mother tongue and culture, as well as the necessary skills to mediate across them. When the above mentioned skills, qualities, knowledge and experiences are cultivated, learners’ intercultural communicative competence is further constructed

Thank you for your Kind Attention! Kosmas Vlachos