Practice of Online Chat Communication between Two Countries and across Different Curricula

There have been many reports about the various benefits of computer-mediated communication (CMC) in the framework of education. Some well-known benefits are: that the participants are able to work at their own pace and at an hour of their choosing (Sutherland-Smith 2002); and that participants also feel more comfortable and confident in expressing their opinions than in face-to-face communication as they can see the text of the discourse and understand it better. They also find the experience less threatening when they do not see other participants (see, for example, Freiermuth 2002). For that reason, online chat in particular is suggested to be an ideal tool for collaborative learning activities whereas in a traditional language class it is often difficult for the parties to all actively participate at the same time (Kitade 2000 and Freiermuth 2002). The language used by participants in CMC differs from study to study. For example, foreign language classes have involved a variety of CMC participants in the past: ‘native speakers and non-native speakers of the target language’ (Kitade 2000), ‘non-native and non-native’ (Freiermuth 2002), and ‘non-native and native as volunteer’ (Iwasaki and Oliver 2003). The participants of those studies were in the same course (except the volunteer in the study by Iwasaki and Oliver) and there are only a few studies on CMC which include participants from different countries (see, for example, Walther 1997, and Cisuentes and Shih 2001). Unlike these studies where all the participants within the same course discuss and decide on a task via online chat, the participants referred to in this study are required to complete their own respective tasks by cooperating online. Therefore, this case is unique in the sense that these participants of online chat are in two different courses (Japanese language and English IT literacy) in two different countries (Australia and Japan); both groups can be identified as either native or non-native speakers depending on which language is employed in the course of communication. The degree of CMC incorporation into courses often becomes problematic for educators when employing the medium. In order to utilize CMC in the best possible way, for example, understanding of the issues that learners might face using computers and flexibility in educators’ practice appear to be key factors to a better learning and teaching environment (McCarthy 1999). Therefore, this study attempts to document and demonstrate how online chat practice between the students in two different courses from two different countries has developed over nine years. It also Practice of Online Chat Communication between Two Countries and across Different Curricula Ritsuko Saito・Noriko Ishizuka 研究資料