Page 110 - Cyberculture and New Media

Rita Zaltsman 101
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Easterners. In Eastern cultures, communication partners first listen to and
establish the other’s position, then react to it and formulate their own. For
that reason, they are often indicated as silent cultures. In general, Easterners
perceive communication with Westerners as an unpleasant experience
(“foreigner complex”) and tend to avoid it.

What do non-Japanese teachers find challenging about
teaching Japanese learners? Long pauses before answering
a teacher’s question; lack of eye contact; long silences; not
initiating; very quiet voicing that is hard to hear; consulting
with classmates before answering; and insistence on
accuracy. These features can be extremely frustrating for
8
teachers.

Identifying/being aware of cultural contrasts (differences in building
and maintaining relationships; differences in communication: direct versus
indirect; verbal versus nonverbal; the time challenge: past-, present-, or
future-oriented; etc.) are often crucial for successful communication and
learning. When ignored, these factors can make effective communication and
learning collaboration in online communities extremely complicated. This
issue acquires much more significance when the communities are
intercultural and the communication is conducted in a non-native language.

3. Methodology
The present paper focuses on linguacultural peculiarities of learning
in global virtual settings. Through lexical, graphical, and semantic
observations of a particular communication process, we have made an
attempt to identify online students’ attitude toward linguacultural barriers in
virtual environments and indicate the role of ELF in cross-cultural e-learning.
The present study is based on the discourse analysis of a cross-
cultural online seminar IKARUS: Teaching and Learning in Virtual Learning
Environments. According to Stubbs, 1983, discourse analysis “is concerned
with language use beyond the boundaries of a sentence/utterance”.
IKARUS (an acronym of a German term: “Internet-basiertes
Kollaboratives ARbeiten in Universitären Lehr- und Lern-Szenarien” -
“Internet based collaborative work in university teaching and learning
environments”) was conducted by the University of Saarland, Germany,
together with e-learning European competency centres from Sweden, Spain
and Greece and funded by the European Commission.
The main goals of the online seminar were: a) to promote
intercultural understanding and co-operation among people from different
countries and encourage the development of international perspectives in
organisational communication; b) to provide opportunities for students,