Promoting students’ cultural context acquisition through Web-based inquiry

Abstract

Since the term intercultural communication was introduced by Edward T. Hall in his book (1959), The Silent Language, issues about intercultural communication have been not only been dealt with in the field of Humanities but also in any area related to human interaction. Moreover, recent researchers have devoted systematic attention to developing “cultural fluency”, “cultural literacy” or “intercultural competence”. The methods through which culture is acquired also have changed from a traditional information acquisition approach to a process-oriented constructivist approach. That is, there has been a movement from approaches where learners are largely simply told about the target culture by the teacher to students’ active participation in construction of understanding about the target culture along with reflecting on their own culture. Using technology as a means to acquire culture is no longer particularly new, but, as Goodyear (2005) argues, the use of technology holds particular promise for the creation of learning settings that can interest and motivate learners. In order to promote students’ active participation in learning culture and to help students’ understanding and reflection on various cultural context —including their own —this study adapted an inquiry-based activity using WebQuests. One of the attractive sides of WebQuests is that students are able to use various resources actively to do a task through organizing information and applying the knowledge acquired to real-life situations. The aim of this study is to help students enrolled in an intercultural communication class to understand various cultural contexts through a systematic inquiry-based approach using WebQuests, and with the goal of eventually improving their intercultural competence. The study used concurrent quantitative and qualitative data. The quantitative data were collected through pre- and post-surveys and an adapted version of the GENE (Generalized Ethnocentrism) scale questionnaires during the course. The analyses of students’ reflection during class discussion and essays written on completion of the WebQuests were measured as the qualitative data. The results of the study show students’ positive improvement qualitatively and quantitatively.