In Search of a Third Place a Telecollaborative Model
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IN SEARCH OF A THIRD PLACE A TELECOLLABORATIVE MODEL FOR LANGUACULTURE LEARNING PRESENTED IN FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY SCHOOL OF APPLIED LANGUAGE AND INTERCULTURAL STUDIES DUBLIN CITY UNIVERSITY JUNE 2004 SUPERVISOR: DR. MARGARET GIBBON VOLUME ONE OF TWO DECLARATION I hereby certify that this material, which I now submit for assessment on the programme of study leading to the award of Doctor of Philosophy is entirely my own work and has not been taken from the work of others save and to the extent that such work has been cited and acknowledged within the text of my work. Signed............. ID N o.............97970522....................................................... Date 15/06/2004 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This PhD thesis has been completed after many years of teaching French in Britain, and English in France. During those years, I have enjoyed the support of many people, too numerous to mention by name, at both a professional and personal level. I should first like to acknowledge my appreciation of my first teaching colleagues at Hardenhuish School, Chippenham, who helped me to find my feet and to develop a life-long enthusiasm for teaching. I should also particularly like to thank my friends and colleagues in the Language Department at the ENST Bretagne, many of whom are border crossers themselves. Working in a multicultural environment has given me access to multiple voices and stories and a wealth of information about the real meaning of gemiltlich, the pronunciation of znachenie or kikokushijo, or the latest films, books or teaching ideas. Special thanks are due to Patrick David, Thierry Le Gall, Jean- Luc Moan, Christine Pet ton, Roselyne Kérébel, Nathalie Chevalier and the late Christian Le Mignon, for their technical support, patience and enthusiasm. I am particularly grateful to Gérard Bréart for his careful and creative work on the montage and the CD Roms, and to Anna Le Milinaire for her painstaking proof reading. I am indebted to my supervisor, Dr Maggie Gibbon, whose inspirational, encouraging and perspicacious comments were invaluable throughout the research process. I am also especially grateful to Vanessa Winspear-Simpson and Celeste Kinginger, who have generously shared their insights, analyses and sense of humour with me. Special thanks also go to the students at ENST Bretagne, 'Midwest University' and 'East University', who participated in the project with enthusiasm. I should like to acknowledge ENST Bretagne for encouraging me to enrol for this thesis and for providing financial support for me to participate in several international conferences. I also thank SALIS for awarding me a research grant and for financing my participation in two international conferences. Special thanks are due to my supportive family, particularly to Margaret Mills and Dennis Mills, to Shân, Sue, Alayne and Christine, to Margaret Hayward, and to Anne-Marie Inizan and Nelly Gourvès. I owe the greatest debt to Patrick Gourvès, without whose constant practical, emotional and intellectual support this work would not have been completed. Finally, to Patrick Gourvès and Thomas Gourvès, who have made my "third place"an exciting, unpredictable, happy and loving one, I dedicate this thesis. SUMMARY This thesis presents a five-year, global classroom project, in which French and American students study the same texts (literature, film remakes, works of sociology and anthropology), while corresponding using ICTs. Their reflections provide the basis for the development of conceptual and perceptual toolkits, containing consciousness-raising activities on individual and culturally-biased semantic and perceptual differences and similarities. Students compare home culture images and the corresponding images from the other culture(s), in an attempt to arrive at a "third place" (Kramsch 1993), as an intercultural speaker (Byraml995; 1997). Feedback and transcripts from participants are used to assess the effectiveness of this pedagogy of languaculture in broadening discourse options and educational opportunities, and of the role of telecollaboration in student motivation and engagement. The analytical framework draws on insights of Bakhtin, Vygotsky and Flarre and Gillet, focussing on the learner as agent, and language as fundamentally dialogic in nature. Telecollaboration provides access to multiple discursive perspectives and negotiation of meaning, whereby students, especially the more motivated, ask real questions and receive real answers. The global classroom leads to a change in the locus of control, increasing motivation and encouraging students to appropriate their own learning. Significant individual, group and cross-cultural differences emerge in the interpretation and degree of appropriation of the materials and opportunities for intercultural communication. This thesis provides research-informed, pedagogical guidelines for developing similar intercultural telecollaborative courses and makes a creative contribution, both to the dialogic teaching of language as culture and to the integration of new technologies into the curriculum. INTRODUCTION 8 CHAPTER 1: TOWARDS A "THIRD PLACE'' 11 1.1 Introduction.................................................................................................................. 11 1.2 The prevalence of grammar-based teaching and the challenge of the communicative approach..... .....................................................................................12 1.2.1 The grammar-translation m ethod...................................................................... 13 1.2.2 The Age of M ethods............................................................................................14 1.2.3 The communicative a p p r o a c h . ...................................................................17 1.2.4 Communicative competence...............................................................................18 1.2.5 The shortcomings of the communicative approach........................................ 19 1.3 From the traditional classroom to socially-constructed understanding...............23 1.3.1 IRE or IRF sequences......................................................................................... 24 1.3.2 Negotiation of meaning...................................................................................... 25 1.3.3 The learner as socioculturally situated agent...................................................26 1.3.3.1 Introduction.................................................................................................. 26 1.3.3.2 Learning as a social process and the Zone of Proximal Development27 1.3.3.3 Situated learning.......................................................................................... 30 1.3.3.4 Mediation.......................................................................................................31 1.3.3.5 Collective scaffolding..................................................................................33 1.4 Intercultural teaching or culture in language teaching..........................................36 1.4.1 Introduction.......................................................................................................... 36 1.4.2 Intercultural teaching...........................................................................................37 1.4.3 Linguaculture and languaculture.................................................................. 39 1.4.4 Early models of culture teaching...................................................................... 40 1.5.The conceptualisation of language and culture for the classroom.........................41 1/1 1.5.1 Introduction 41 1.5.2 Making the familiar strange.............................................................................. 43 1.5.3 Un savoir interprétatif........................................................................................ 45 1.5.4 Quatre savoirs......................................................................................................46 1.5.5 Tertiary socialisation......................................................................................... 47 1. 5.6 From native speaker to intercultural speaker.................................................. 48 1. 5.7 Multicompetence...............................................................................................50 1.5.8 Empathy..............................................................................................................51 1. 5.9 The cultural studies model................................................................................53 1. 5.10 Preparing for the unpredictable.....................................................................54 1.5.11 The color purple............................................................................................. 56 1. 5.12 The language learner as ethnographer..........................................................57 1. 5.13 Current directions.............................................................................................59 1.6 Definitions of “third places”...................................................................................60 1.6.1 The third places of bilinguals and border crossers........................................60 1.6.1.1 Destierro....................................................................................................... 61 1.6.1.2 Strangers to ourselves...............................................................................