Korean-English Internet chat in tandem for learning language and culture: A curricular innovation in an International Languages program

The study reports on the learning outcomes of a thematic, task-based curricular innovation in which paired Korean and English-speaking peers, each learning the other's language and culture, collaborate on chat homework assignments and related classroom activities in an International Languages class. This study draws primarily on sociocultural theory to investigate language learning through computer-mediated communicative tasks as a socially mediated process. This ethnographically based longitudinal case study follows principles of action research to identify contributions each research tradition can make to our understanding of language learning through interaction among learners within a learning community. In order to explore second language acquisition during interaction, this study also employs an interactionist approach to examine more specific linguistic and interactional features of learners' online chat discourse in tandem.; Examination of the students' online chat interactions and related tandem classroom discussions and activities between experts and novices, with the tandem partners fulfilling each role in turn, reveals how collaborative peer-peer dialogue supports knowledge-building within this cross-linguistic learning environment. Data, qualitative in nature, reveal how these students are able to learn and teach contextually meaningful and appropriate linguistic and cultural behaviour through socially mediated actions, using online peer-peer collaborative dialogue, computers and tasks as meaning-making resources within their own cross-linguistic learning community. The findings show that the online chat interactions contributed to the establishment of a community of learners and supported effective second language learning. Specifically they show the ways in which learners appropriated a variety of language practices from one another, developed awareness of self in relation to others, and participated in expert and novice discursive learning practices in the construction of meaning. During collaborative peer-peer conversations, they adapted their language and negotiated meaning to facilitate communication and enhance their second language learning. Both qualitative and quantitative data on their second language learning outcomes, including growth of vocabulary and explicit learning of L2 cultural concepts from thematic tasks show important learning outcomes for both groups. The findings of the study extend our understanding of what it means to learn a language and engage with another culture.