A Survey Of Internet-mediated Cross-cultural English Instruction

With the growth of the concern about international communication all over the world,research and investigations of cross-culture English teaching have become quite necessaryand important. Cross-cultural English teaching is not only the extension and development ofcommunicative language teaching, but also a completely different English teaching concept.Great emphasis has been placed on the cross-cultural English teaching. In western countries,the studies of foreign language teaching and learning from the cross-cultural perspective orinternet technology perspective have become prominent over the past three decades. However,there is little research integrate cross-cultural language and internet technology. Besides, inChina, the empirical research on cross-cultural English teaching is still in the initial stage, aclear picture of internet-mediated cross-cultural English education (ICEE) has been far fromconceived.Therefore, this paper aims at researching the current situation of internet-mediated cross-cultural English education in Shandong universities. There are two main objectives in thispaper. One objective is to find out the teachers’ and learners’ practices and perceptions ofICEE in Shandong universities. The other objective is find out if there are any difference ofpractices and perceptions between English major students and non-English major students,English major teachers and non-English major teachers. In order to make the investigationmore scientific, both qualitative approach and quantitative approach were selected to collectdata for this study. Through convenience sampling method,62valid teacher questionnaires(32valid English major teacher questionnaires and30valid non-English major teacherquestionnaires) as well as66valid student questionnaires (31valid English major studentquestionnaires and30valid non-English major student questionnaires) were collected from11Shandong universities. With the help of SPSS13.0, descriptive analysis and independentsamples T test were performed to analyze the questionnaires data. In addition, classroomobservation and interview as quantitative instruments to find more realistic andcomprehensive evaluation about internet-mediated cross-cultural English education.The major findings of the present study showed that ICEE development has been regardedas an important strategy. However, there exist some problems in the specific practice of ICEE.For example, the value of using online communication and information technologies asinvestigatory tools are under-explored; related training and guidance for teachers and studentsare insufficient; home culture teaching is missing and so on. The result of independentsamples T test showed that there are some differences of practices and perceptions between English major students and non-English major students, English major teachers and non-English major teachers. In general, EMTS and EMSS are better than NEMTS and NEMSSin terms of perception and practice.