Using telecollaboration through Facebook to develop the English as a foreign language Learners’ intercultural communicative competence

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating the impact of the integration the use of Facebook on developing learners’ intercultural communicative competence. It was hypothesized that if Facebook experience is integrated in foreign language classrooms, learners will better benefit from it in developing their intercultural communicative competence. The integration took place within a telecollaborative project that was designed in collaboration with a Brazilian Professor, Stephan Hughes. 126 first year Master students at the department of English at the University of Mohammed Seddik Ben Yahia /Jijel and their Brazilian counterparts interacted with each other guided by weekly posted tasks in a Facebook group labelled ‘Cross Cultural Critical Thinkers’, established for this purpose. The telecollaborative project lasted for more than three months, from mid-January to the end of April 2017, after being piloted in the first semester of the same academic year. The evaluation of the project was both quantitative and qualitative; three research tools were applied and triangulated. The ‘Assessment of Intercultural Competence’ developed by Fantini and Tirmizi in 2006 was used as a pre-test and a post-test; the participants’ observation covered their interaction both in class and online through the use of an observation grid and portfolios; and the focus group discussions were carried out at the end of the project. The results indicated that first year Master students who participated in the project achieved enhancement in the various abilities that constitute intercultural communicative competence, albeit they showed some individual variation. The efficiency of the project was further supported by the findings of the comparative study; the learners who participated in the project outperformed those who did not participate i.e. First year Master students at the University Centre of Mila, despite the fact that they had the same curriculum and syllabuses. The researcher concluded with depicting the limitations of the study and suggestions for further research.