Page 115 - Cyberculture and New Media

106 The Challenge of Intercultural Electronic Learning
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with that of their Western communication partners. The discourse
observation clearly shows that ELF was playing the role of a powerful
bridge-builder, which resulted in a qualitative collaboration between opposite
cultural contexts:

It would be difficult to experience flow if I had to interrupt
my thinking/working process with the search for words or if
I checked my grammar all the time (this might result in a lot
of mistakes, but what the hack ... ;-).

Notable is that some Easterners have unexpectedly demonstrated
more competency in English than their Western co-students. Easterners
attribute this to the language environment they were brought up in:

I’m Egyptian but my Arabic and English are almost the
same level... This is because I always went to a British
school with British/Australian teachers, then American
University, then worked in an American multinational.

A Chinese student living in the Netherlands regrets not being able to
communicate in pure British/American English (which nobody expects her
to) as she has been brought up under the conditions of linguistic diversity:

I was born in Malaysia with Chinese parentage. Left
Malaysia since 19. Since then lived in UK, NL
[Netherlands], US. I have just moved back to NL June
2001. Have worked in Korea, China, Australia, South
American regions etc.

The growth of the level of English language proficiency may also be
attributed to the shift to conversational learning in the East. To understand
this, have a look at the previous English learning situation in China:

Owing to the powerful influence of the traditional language
teaching methods, both teachers and students typically
adopt the grammar-translation method. This method
focuses on grammar and vocabulary, on linguistic
phenomena rather than on reading. Little or no attention is
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paid to speaking or listening.

In the new millennium, the methods of English learning in the East
have been revolutionised: it is no longer limited to learning grammar and
practising translation as it used to be. This resulted in the increasing level of