Using an online social network site as a learning community to enhance EFL learners’ cultural awareness

Abstract

EFL students suffer from low awareness of the target culture and low actual intercultural communicative competence due to an insufficient input and decontextualized learning environment; the current study, therefore, aimed to use Internet social networking, specifically Facebook, as a learning community framework to enhance EFL students’ cultural awareness via cross-cultural interaction with American e-pals. The participants were 15 English majored students in Taiwan and 20 undergraduate students in the U.S. The participants were asked to engage in cross-cultural communication on chosen topics (self-introduction, school life, and Taiwanese night markets or American county fairs) with the American students. A mixed method of qualitative and quantitative research was employed to analyze the data. While qualitative data included focus group interviews and reflective papers, quantitative data consisted of evaluation of the students’ cultural awareness. The major findings were: (1) Students demonstrated a moderate level of cultural awareness, (2) Using Facebook helped students to overcome the differences in time zones, to gain in cultural awareness, to clarify stereotypes, and to recognize their improvements, (3) Students found benefits in the comfortable learning environment, including classroom atmosphere, cultural awareness, authentic readers, writing skills, motivation, and autonomous learning. In conclusion, the results revealed the merits of creating an online learning community for EFL students. In addition, the framework of the instructional design provides researchers and instructors with directions to enhance the cultural awareness of students in an English writing class.