Page 116 - Cyberculture and New Media

Rita Zaltsman 107
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English language proficiency, not only in China, but in the Eastern world on
the whole. English has become the preferred choice of communication in the
second language situations for Easterners - consequently, they (here: a
Chinese Malaysian) feel “quite at home with it”:

I considered myself to be quite good with computer and the
Internet. But […] I am quite ‘blind’ to computer software
instructions in Chinese. Therefore, I prefer to have
everything in English at least I can understand a bit better.

It is notable that Easterners (here: several cultural convergents - a
Chinese Malaysian and an Egyptian, both using distance learning for their
Ph.D. in England) displayed a high level of language competency, success-
oriented thinking and greatly contributed to collaborative work. They
demonstrated fluent English, were working hard to earn more credits, were
creative, helpful and competitive as well as often initiated group discussions.
Online tutors were not absolute authorities for them - they challenged them,
presented their views, even if the latter differed from that of the instructors’.
This indicates that cultural differences in virtual settings along
West/East paradigm are no longer contrasting: Easterners from academic
circles who are taking part in cross-cultural online projects seem to little
differ in their classroom conduct or language fluency from their Western co-
students.
Interestingly, a Swedish student states that successful online
communication and learning cannot be secured only through fluent English
and provides reasons for that:

... I now know that this way of learning is not mine. I [...]
miss the personal contact which inspires me, I need to see
reactions on faces in order to feel safe in conversing.
[...] there is a huge part of communication going
on when we are talking that is not language. And a large
amount (if not all) is lost when we communicate in writing,
even worse: electronic writing.

The present discourse is rich in such electronic writing which is
represented mostly graphically - with emoticons and smileys which are
universally accepted methods of linguistic compression widely used in
computer-mediated communication. Both emoticons and smileys add
meaning and emotional charge to written texts. Some students view them as
“the jargon that can be understood without too many words”, or as a part of
another language (“I view this as Italian or Spanish words”). In general,
emoticons and smileys are used to avoid many misunderstandings. Having