Crossing borders: how cross-cultural video conferencing can satisfy course goals in dissimilar subjects

Jeffrey S Wilkinson
Regent University
USA
Wang Ai-ling
TamKang University
Taiwan


Rapid upgrades globally in the Internet network infrastructure are facilitating an explosion in the use of videoconferencing among academic institutions. A number of universities have implemented programs where students and teachers can use videoconferencing to practice and enhance spoken foreign language skills. Students in Taiwan who are learning English as a foreign language (EFL) face some major obstacles. First, they often lack opportunities to communicate with native speakers of the target language. Second, their learning of English has been exam-directed rather than function-directed.

An ongoing collaboration between a university in Taiwan and a university in the United States has integrated videoconferencing technology with language learning. The research design and development was based on the researchers' conviction that learning of a foreign language can be best achieved by real-life experiences interacting with native speakers of the target language.

In the Fall, 2005, two classes were linked together through Internet-based videoconferencing. A class of 28 Taiwanese students participated with a class of 11 American students. The Taiwanese were freshman English majors and the Americans were graduate students majoring in Journalism. Over the course of the semester, a series of live, interactive meetings were conducted. Various topics were scheduled for discussion, with the Taiwanese students required to prepare and be ready to speak in English. The American students used journalistic principles of interviewing to ask probing questions about Taiwanese culture and society.

The results confirmed that learning a foreign language involves complicated psychological and social factors. This study discovered evidence that spontaneous, cross-cultural videoconferencing reduced learners' anxiety in communicating with native speakers of the target language. There is some evidence that college English teachers have an exciting alternative for teaching important listening and speaking skills in an EFL environment. The anxiety over learning a foreign language may be transferred from a debilitative one to a facilitative one through regular and direct contact with native speakers of the target language. Findings of the study may demonstrate for English teachers in Taiwan how an alternative way of teaching spoken English may be set up and how foreign cultures may be incorporated into the teaching of foreign languages. In addition, this study provides students with an opportunity to look at learning a foreign language from a different perspective. That is, by using the target language in a genuine context and for a real purpose, students, as language learners, will have a wider view of how languages work. This view, in turn, may lead to even greater enthusiasm to learn a foreign language.