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Changing cultural stereotypes through e-mail assisted foreign language learning
System 32 (2004) 37–51 www.elsevier.com/locate/system
Changing cultural stereotypes through e-mail assisted foreign language learning§ Hiroko Itakura* Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,Hong Kong, China Received 26 March 2002; received in revised form 12 March 2003; accepted 15 April 2003
Abstract This paper explores the question of how cultural stereotypes are formed, modified, dismissed or reinforced, drawing on findings from a collaborative intercultural e-mail project between Hong Kong learners of Japanese at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and native Japanese speakers at Kagoshima University. It also evaluates role of e-mail assisted projects in breaking down the stereotypes. Analysis of the data collected from e-mail exchanges, project reports and interviews with the participants suggests that, first, the cultural assumptions of learners are formed on the basis of various types of inputs from the target culture. Second, the level of assurance that the learners felt about the accuracy of cultural representations appears to be related to the types and origins of the input from the target culture. Third, there may be a hierarchical relationship of inputs in terms of the degree of impact each type of input from the target culture has on forming the cultural stereotypes of learners. Those based on remarks from native speakers and classroom teaching appear to be more influential than those based on the mass media and hearsay from fellow learners. Fourth, although the project enabled the learners to validate and modify their previous assumptions, it also created new stereotypes or reinforced existing ones. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Stereotypes; Foreign Language Learning; E-mail; Culture; Japanese; Hong Kong
§
This paper is a revised version of the conference paper ‘‘Using E-mail for JFL & Intercultural Awareness’’ presented at JALT 2001, Kitakyuushuu, Japan, with Sachiko Nakajima. * Fax: +852-2333-6569. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Itakura). 0346-251X/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2003.04.003
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1. Introduction There is a widely held consensus that enhancing intercultural understanding is a crucial part of foreign language teaching. Teaching of culture in foreign language teaching has traditionally been defined as the transmission of information about the people of the target culture (Kramsch, 1993, p. 205; see also Hinkel, 1999, pp. 1–7 for an overview of traditional and recent approaches to the teaching of culture). More recent approaches to teaching culture in the foreign language classroom, however, have encouraged diversified, flexible and sensitive ways of looking at the target culture and interaction with target language speakers (Byram, 1997; Byram et al., 2001; Cortazzi and Jin, 1999; Harrison, 1990; Kim 2001; Kramsch, 1991, 1993; Lantolf, 1999; Valdes, 1986). It is also increasingly recognised that learners should be provided with opportunities to conduct their own research on the target culture so that they will be able to acquire skills to process, analyse and integrate various kinds of data. For example, Byram (1997) advocates that culture seen as a static object should be abandoned in foreign language teaching in favour of methods that focus on equipping learners with the means of accessing and analysing any cultural practices and meanings they encounter. Byram and Esarte-Sarries (1991) also emphasises the importance of learners’ becoming ethnographers (see also Robinson-Stuart and Nocon, 1996), while Kim (2001, pp. 106–108) suggests that it is important for learners to develop ‘cognitive complexity’ in processing information related to the target culture so that they will be able to consolidate seemingly diverse and even contradictory pieces of information into a meaningful and integrated whole. Another important aspect of inercultural understanding is to promote learners’ critical awareness of their own culture as well as the target culture, and develop the ability to analyse data from their own and another culture and establish the potential relationship between them (Byram, 1997; see also Honna, 1999). To reflect this recent trend, e-mail has been widely used to assist projects designed to promote intercultural understanding in foreign language learning (Crowe et al., 1996; Galloway, 1995; Liaw and Johnson, 2001; Oliva and Pollastrini, 1995; Soh and Soon, 1991; Warschauer, 1995). Various positive effects of e-mail assisted projects have been reported. For example, Liaw and Johnson (2001) report that university EFL students in Taiwan and pre-service bilingual ESL teachers in the USA developed their own views of interpreting the target culture, new ways of looking at the target culture and sensitivity to cultural differences through e-mail correspondence. Galloway (1995) also reported a raised awareness of cultural relativity as an outcome of an e-mail project involving Japanese university EFL students and students in the USA. Soh and Soon (1991) claimed that EFL students in Singapore and ESL students in Quebec were able to learn to look at and assess their work and the works of others from different perspectives through an e-mail project. While a number of ‘success’ and benefits of e-mail assisted intercultural projects have been reported in the literature, there is a dearth of literature that critically evaluates such projects and informs foreign language teachers of possible pitfalls involved therein. Such projects may have a negative impact, for example, of creating
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or reinforcing existing cultural stereotypes or ‘‘exaggerated set of expectations and beliefs about the attributes of a group membership category’’ (Ting-Toomey, 1999, p. 161). As Kramsch (1993, pp. 207–210) argues, stereotypes are ‘tenacious’ and may be reinforced even when they are contradicted by direct observation of the target culture and have proven to be false. It is therefore possible that learners reinforce stereotypes during such projects when they obtain new information on the target culture from its native speakers, rather than developing more sensitive views. While stereotypes may facilitate the learner’s comprehension of unfamiliar behavioural patterns, they can easily lead to intolerance towards out-group members and impede intercultural communication (Jandt, 2001; Kim, 2001; Ting-Toomey, 1999). They are formed on the basis of various types of information about the target culture: including information disseminated from the mass media, advertising and experiences of encounters with the target culture. Factors such as learners’ mood when processing the new information, the size of the groups being stereotyped and their physical appearance are also said to influence the formation of stereotypes (Gudykunst, 2001, pp.122–133). Once formed, cultural stereotypes are not easily dismissed. Instead, they are likely to be retained or even become reinforced. In order to promote diversified and sensitive ways of viewing the target culture, it is therefore necessary to understand how cultural stereotypes are formed, and when they may be dismissed, modified or reinforced in particular contexts of learning. This paper evaluates an e-mail assisted intercultural project in relation to its effect on the formation or breakdown of stereotypes among the foreign language learners. The project incorporated a systematic collection and analysis of data from their own and the target culture in order to provide them with opportunities to conduct research. It focuses on the following questions: (a) what kinds of input form the basis of stereotyped assumptions about the target culture, (b) under what circumstances these assumptions may be dismissed, retained, modified or reinforced and (c) how the learners made sense of similarities and differences between their own and target culture through data collection? More specifically, the paper addresses the question of whether learners’ assumptions about the target culture are affected differently depending on the origins of the existing cultural assumptions and types of newly acquired input. These questions are investigated by analysing multiple sources of data collected from Hong Kong learners of Japanese language and culture in the course of their participation in an intercultural e-mail project with native speakers of Japanese from Japan.
2. Profile of learners and the intercultural e-mail project Thirty JFL students at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and four Japanese students at Kagoshima University, Japan, participated in the intercultural e-mail project. The JFL students were all Cantonese speakers in their second year of an undergraduate programme (BA in Languages with Business). At the time of the
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project, they had learned Japanese for approximately 330 h and attained a lowerintermediate level of proficiency. The four Japanese students were all native speakers of Japanese in their second year of their degree course in International Understanding. The main objective of the project was to increase knowledge about Japanese language and culture (for the Hong Kong students) and Hong Kong culture (for the Japanese students) and to enhance intercultural understanding between the two groups. The Hong Kong students, who are the focus of this paper, divided themselves into four groups of seven or eight, each of which was matched with one native speaker Japanese student. Each group chose a topic for an ‘intercultural survey’, in which they would investigate similarities and differences between attitudes to life in Hong Kong and Japan held by the Japanese and Hong Kong students. For example, one of the groups chose ‘love and marriage’ as their topic. After the group members introduced themselves to each other, they exchanged e-mail on the similarities and differences of people’s attitudes towards love and marriage in Hong Kong and Japan. They then designed a questionnaire to investigate this issue among Hong Kong and Japanese university students, which was administered to approximately 50–80 university students in each location. Questions included issues of marriage with a foreigner, co-habitation and pre-marital pregnancy, and age differences between a husband and wife. Topics for the other three groups were ‘family’, ‘consumption habits’ and ‘university life’. Responses to the questionnaire were exchanged between the Hong Kong and Japanese students. At the end of the project, the participants wrote a project report (in groups for the Hong Kong students and individually for the Japanese students) in which they analysed and synthesized the data (for details of the project, see the Appendix). All e-mail exchanges and project reports were written in Japanese.
3. Data The following types of data were collected in the course of the project and formed the basis of the present study: E-mail messages (approximately 300 in total written by 30 Hong Kong students) Four project reports (written by groups) Interviews with nine Hong Kong students on their cultural experience during the project, changed views on the target culture and evaluation of the project These data were analysed in order to find empirical evidence for the three questions mentioned above. The e-mail exchanges were analysed in order to investigate the range of input that formed the basis of stereotyped assumptions about the target culture [Question (a)] in Section 4.1. In Section 4.2, I will examine the interview data in terms of the nature of learners’ assumptions and their modifications over
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the course of the project [Question (b)]. Section 4.3. will look at one of the project reports in order to explore the question of how learners interpreted similarities and differences between the two cultures through data collection [Question (c)].
4. Findings 4.1. Target culture input and formation of cultural stereotypes Analysis of the e-mail exchanges showed that the stereotypical assumptions of Hong Kong students about Japanese culture were supported by a range of sources including the following: (a) hearsay from fellow learners of Japanese (b) the mass media (especially comic books and television) and (c) classroom teaching. Below, I will illustrate each type from the data and discuss its nature (with my emphasis). (a) Hearsay from fellow learners of Japanese as a foreign language [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKP Jan 2001] According to my friends, Japanese teachers are very strict. Is this true? Are there many kyouiku mama (i.e., mothers who are strongly involved in their children’s education)? What are Japanese teachers like? (b) The mass media: comic books [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKJ 9 Jan 2001] I read a (Japanese) comic book yesterday. The content of the comic book was that final-year graduate university students in Japan want to obtain jobs and they use various means to get one. For example, they go to visit alumni of the university before they take the examination in the company.... For them, getting an unofficial offer is what matters. Are your friends encountering a similar situation? Do you think you will be in a similar situation when you are in your fourth year of study? (c) The mass media: television news [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKA 26 Dec 2000] According to the news, the cost of living in Japan is very high. I would like to find out more about consumption habits of Japanese people (through this project) A common discourse pattern observed in the examples above is ‘‘My assumption about Japanese culture is ‘X’ (which I gained from ‘Y’ [informational source]). What is the actual situation?’’(where Y may refer to various sources of information on Japanese culture that the learners had previously encountered, including the mass media, comic books, conversations with their friends, and their own personal observations). These data suggest that learners are aware that assumptions based on these sources may be inaccurate. They also suggest that learners may believe that native speakers know the ‘actual situation’ and that their assumptions can be validated by information directly obtained from native speakers of Japanese.
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Analysis of the e-mail messages written by the Hong Kong students found seven instances in which they sought validation of the information gained from various sources with their Japanese interlocutor (see (a) to (c) above for examples). Of these seven instances, four concern the validity of information gained from the mass media such as newspapers (two instances), television news (one instance) and comic books (one instance); two seek validity of hearsay from their fellow learners; and one of personal observations about the target culture with a Japanese interlocutor. (d) Classroom teaching While examples were found where learners sought to validate assumptions based on input from the mass media and fellow learners with their Japanese interlocutors, the data contained no examples where learners tried to validate the information provided by their teacher. Analysis of e-mail exchanges between Hong Kong students and Japanese students did not find the pattern ‘‘I heard Y from my teacher. Is this true?’’. Classroom teaching or what learners hear from their teachers, however, appears to be an important source of cultural input. One of the students (HKP), for example, stated during her interview: Interview excerpt (1) (translated from Chinese): Interviewer: HKP:
Interviewer: HKP:
Where does your general impression come from that Japanese people are under great pressure? Er for instance. . . I feel they work very seriously, treat their boss as their top priority, and treat the teacher as their top priority. Students are students. Japanese people are very disciplined. As their life is constrained by everything, I think they are under pressure. Where do you get the information? The teacher (i.e., her tutor in one of her business subjects) says that people are very disciplined in Japan. I mean, in this subject we learn about Japanese culture.
Although the scope of data collected for the present study is limited, this suggests that classroom teaching may be more influential in the formation of stereotypes than other sources for these students. 4.2. Modification of cultural stereotypes The discussion so far suggests that the input that forms the basis of stereotypes comes from various sources and that learners may be aware of the need to validate the accuracy of stereotype. In this section, I will analyse the interview data in order to explore how existing stereotypical assumptions may be changed, by focusing on the outcome of interactions between previous assumptions and a newly obtained input that contradicted them. The interview data identified two sources of information from which learners had previously obtained information on the target before the project: the media and
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classroom teaching. It also identified two kinds of new information that the learners obtained during the project: remarks made by native speakers of Japanese during e-mail exchanges and project findings from their joint intercultural surveys. The previously obtained information (i.e. the media and classroom teaching) and new information (i.e. native speaker’s remarks and project findings) contradicted each other in three different ways: (1) newly obtained project findings contradicted previous classroom teaching (two instances); (2) newly obtained project findings contradicted previously held assumptions gained from the mass media (five instances) and (3) newly obtained remarks from native speakers contradicted previously held assumptions based on the mass media (three instances). 4.2.1. Contradiction between new project findings and previous classroom teaching Both learners who reported that their project findings contradicted what their former teacher taught them in classroom modified their new project findings. Classroom teaching seems to be highly influential in the formation of cultural stereotypes for the students in this study. Assumptions about Japanese people that learners formed on the basis of what their teacher had previously taught them seemed to be retained, although in a modified form, even when learners obtained new information during the project. For example, during the interview, Student HKP said that, on the basis of information from her teacher, she believed that Japanese people were hard working even to the extent of sacrificing their own life (information given not by her Japanese instructor but by the lecturer of a business subject). She had therefore predicted that the results from her group’s survey would confirm this (i.e., that Japanese university students would be subject to greater pressure and stress than Hong Kong students). However, the results were different from her predictions. Commenting on the mismatch, she did not dismiss the information from the teacher. Instead she made qualifications on the range of applicability of the project findings: that they are only applicable to a specific group within Japanese society. This suggests that learners may become more aware of cultural diversity; for example, the existence of geographical differences within the foreign culture when the new input contradicts their former classroom learning. However, classroom learning still appears to be retained as the representation of the mainstream culture, while the students’ own project findings were represented as a description of the peripheral culture in remote areas of Japan. 4.2.2. Contradictions between new project findings and previously held assumptions based on the media In four out of the five instances where newly obtained input gained from the project’s findings contradicted the previously obtained input from the media, the stereotypical views based on media representations were modified. For example, another student, HKN, had predicted that the survey on spending habits would reveal that Japanese students tend to spend more money on fashion than Hong Kong students but the project’s findings contradicted this. The excerpt from her post-project interview below illustrates how she dealt with the contradiction:
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Interview excerpt (2) (translated from Chinese): HKN:
Interviewer:
HKN:
. . .Why I thought the Japanese spent much money on fashion is from watching Japanese dramas and TV programmes. [There, Japanese people] spend a lot on it. And when I read magazines, I see Japanese people dressed very nicely. This is why I had predicted they would spend lots of money on fashion. OK. Well, your prediction was different from your findings from the survey. Well . . . what do you think about it now? Now, I feel it depends on different parts of Japan. If you talk about Shibuya or Tokyo or large cites like these, people pay much attention to their appearance and what they wear. If we go to some remote area like Kagoshima or Beppu [where the survey took place], [Japanese] students aren’t frivolous and don’t spend much money on fashion.
In this excerpt, she attributes the contradiction between her prediction and project findings to geographical differences within the culture of Japan (the respondents of her questionnaire were residents of a remote area of Japan). Her stereotypical views on Japanese culture as culturally homogeneous were modified to allow for more cultural diversity. In the remaining example where new project findings contradicted the previous assumptions based on the media, the interviewed student reported that information obtainable from television is more reliable than that from the project, as the former is based on a larger quantity of data analysed with more depth. 4.2.3. Contradiction between the remarks from a native speaker and previously held assumptions based on the media In all three instances where newly obtained remarks made by their native-speaking Japanese interlocutor contradicted learners’ existing assumptions based on the media, their previous assumptions based on the media were modified in light of the native speaker’s remarks. The learners changed their existing cultural stereotypes of Japanese people owing to what their native-speaking group member said during their e-mail exchanges. For example, Student HKE’s prior views of Japanese students as hard working changed because her Japanese group member JT said they were not. During her interview, she explained this, as follows: Interview excerpt (3) (translated from Chinese): Interviewer:
. . .in the past did you believe that Japanese university students studied very hard?
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HKE:
Interviewer: HKE: Interviewer: HKE:
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Right. Because I watched many TV dramas and I sometimes read comic books. [There] Japanese people commonly wear headbands that say ‘‘Study!’’ Well, [there they are] really studying all the time. This gave me the impression that Japanese people might be under a lot of pressure and are always studying hard. Mm, mm Hong Kong students are different. They are a bit like ‘‘They dig wells when they want to drink’’. You’ve changed your way of looking at the situation [because of the project]? Right, because I was able to e-mail to a Japanese university student and ask him questions directly. He replied to me saying that this was not the case. He said that he didn’t study very hard, that he studied only during the examination, that he would not go home every day and start studying wearing a headband ((laughs)). In the past, I believed that there were people like those [whom I saw on TV and comic books]. But he said no.
Her interaction with a native speaker therefore seemed to have undermined her stereotypical views of Japanese culture formed from the mass media. Another student, HKNO, appeared to modify previous cultural stereotypes based on television programmes upon obtaining a native speaker’s remarks on Japanese marriage: Interview excerpt (4) [English interview with some editing]: HKNO is talking about his experience of corresponding with his Japanese interlocutor, JT, by e-mail. HKNO: We used to have certain ideas about Japan but after I communicated with JT, I think there is something- there are some differences between what the media say about Japan and what JT said.. . . He said, I remember he said that Japanese people are not keen on the idea of getting married. Yeah. But in our mind, [Hong Kong students tend to assume] Japanese girls would like to marry a good man when they graduate. But then JT said that Japanese girls would not like to do so, and that they would not like to marry after they graduate as they would like to pursue their career. The remaining student, HKN, stated during her interview that information obtained from even one native speaker of the language is more reliable than knowledge gained by reading books. She further went on to say that reading books and attending classes is sufficient for a superficial knowledge of Japanese
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culture, but that it is difficult to verify knowledge obtained by such means. If you want to get real knowledge of Japanese, you need to speak with Japanese people. These examples suggest that cultural input from native speakers may be strongly influential, even if it comes from a single person. However, while such input may undermine cultural stereotypes and facilitate the emergence of a more complex view of the target culture, it has also the potential of constituting a new stereotype when what the native speaker has said is interpreted as a representative description of the target culture. 4.2.4. Summary In sum, in a majority of the cases where newly obtained cultural input via the project findings contradicted previously held assumptions based on the media, the previously held assumptions were modified. In both of the cases where new project findings contradicted previous assumptions based on classroom teaching, previous classroom teaching was mostly retained. In all three cases where new native speaker’s remarks contradicted previous assumptions based on the media, the previous assumptions based on the media were modified. Although the data was limited, the analysis suggests that there may be different degrees of influence among various cultural inputs. It also suggests that when learners obtained new cultural inputs, their previous assumptions may not necessarily be modified. For example, while newly obtained project findings and native speakers’ remarks appeared to be strongly influential in modifying previous assumptions based on the media, the newly obtained project findings seemed to be less influential for the modification of previous classroom teaching. 4.3. Reinforcement of stereotypes Analysis of the interview data has shown that new project findings on student life between Hong Kong and Japan often modified the previous assumptions of learners about the target culture, possibly allowing for more diversified views. This section will examine one of the project reports to discuss yet another aspect of the projects: they may reinforce existing stereotypical assumptions. When the students interpreted results from their intercultural survey, they often evoked stereotypes of Japanese culture as well as those of their own culture to endorse them. Below are two such examples of excerpts from one of the project reports (my emphases): Excerpt from project report (1) (translated from Japanese): . . . The number of [Japanese] people who responded that they would consult their father [if they have a problem] is small. This is because the image of the Japanese father is very strict. Many Japanese people responded that they would consult their mother. This is because Japanese mothers are very kind. . . Many Hong Kong people responded that they would consult their friends.
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Excerpt from project report (2) (translated from Japanese): ‘‘. . . Hong Kong men were found to do more housework than Japanese men. We think an important factor here is the fact that Hong Kong has received influence from Western culture and Hong Kong women are ‘career fighters’, ‘demons for work’ or ‘iron ladies with a career’’’. It appears from these excepts that when the learners obtained the target culture input that matched their existing assumptions, they endorsed them by invoking cultural stereotypes of the target culture as well as their own culture, with the possible effect that their existing cultural stereotypes were reinforced. Below is a similar example: Excerpt from project report (3) (translated from Japanese): [Writing about the results from the survey question ‘‘Who has the most power within the family?] Although we hear that the status of Japanese women has become higher, the number of Japanese people who said the mother has the most power was only 22 percent. . . The reason is that Hong Kong women and Japanese women have different personalities. Japanese women are always kind while Hong Kong women are powerhungry. In this excerpt, learners endorsed project findings on a Japanese mother’s lower power at home by invoking traditional images of Japanese women as possessing a lower social status and also stereotypes of Chinese women as career-oriented. Such polarized assumptions of the native and foreign cultures may have the effect of accentuating the differences, thus reinforcing existing stereotypes.
5. Discussion The study showed that the e-mail intercultural project was effective in promoting more sensitive and complex views of the target culture in two main ways. First, the e-mail exchanges with a native speaker of the target language enabled the learners to modify existing stereotypes formed on the basis of sources such as the media and hearsay from their fellow learners. Contact with a native speaker via e-mail also encouraged the learners to become more aware of the limitations and problems of cultural stereotypes and to negotiate the validity of their previous assumptions. Second, the study also demonstrated the importance of encouraging the learners to conduct their own research on cultural phenomena (Byram, 1997; Byram and EsarteSarries, 1991). This appeared to help the learners to develop more careful attitudes in handling intercultural data, more attentiveness to the processing of cultural inputs, and more thoughtful ways of viewing the target culture and their own culture. But although the project appeared to benefit the participants, some less positive negative aspects have also been revealed. First, the learners were found to be greatly
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influenced by remarks made by native speakers to the extent that they sometimes formed new stereotypes. This is reminiscent of what Kramsch (1998) has said about the power of native speakers in the foreign language classroom: that the ‘native speaker is always right’. Not only are native speaker intuitions called upon to resolve doubts about linguistic issues but they also seem to be turned to with respect to culture. Although the project emphasised the learners’ roles as co-researchers, the Hong Kong participants appeared to see the Japanese participants as figures of authority during the e-mail exchanges and also when interpreting the data. The classroom teaching also appeared to be strongly influential in that the Hong Kong learners did not modify what they had previously heard from their teachers, when it was contradicted by new cultural information. Instead, remarks made by their teachers were retained, albeit with some slight modifications, despite contradictory new information. Second, during their attempts to integrate newly obtained information from their project with their existing assumptions about the target culture, the learners were observed to invoke cultural stereotypes of both their own culture and the target culture to endorse newly obtained information. This appeared to lead to some accentuation of their perceptions of differences between the two cultures and reinforcement of cultural stereotypes. This suggests that the following points should be taken into account in the foreign language teaching practice and the design of e-mail assisted intercultural project. First, the learners need to be encouraged to interpret remarks made by native speakers and also the foreign language teachers more critically, while native speakers and foreign language teachers need to be made aware of the potentially strong impact of their remarks on the formation of stereotypes for their non-native interlocutors and students. The view that they should be in the position of figures of authority as sources of cultural information (e.g., Byram and Esarte-Sarries, 1991) needs to be reconsidered. Second, the ‘risk’ in pairing the learners with a single native speaker, which was unavoidable in the present project, should be recognized. The opportunity to obtain diverse views of the target culture voiced by more than one native speaker may decrease the chance that the learners will form new stereotypes. Regular meetings between the teacher and learners should also be held during such projects to discuss how to interpret remarks made by the speakers of the target language. Third, the process of data analysis and synthesis may also require group discussion involving the learners, native speakers, and teachers as co-researchers so that the accounts can be collaboratively interpreted from various angles.
6. Conclusion Although the scale of the present study was small, I hope that the findings presented in this paper will be able to contribute to the understanding of stereotypes in the learning of foreign languages and cultures. The analysis has shown that learners’ assumptions about the target culture are formed on the basis of various sources of previously obtained inputs, which may vary in terms of relative strength of influ-
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ence. It has also been demonstrated that the relative impact of previously obtained and newly obtained target culture inputs may condition learners’ future assumptions about the target culture. The e-mail intercultural project has been shown to benefit the learners in different ways to develop more sensitive and complex views on culture. However, its less positive effects have also been revealed. For example, e-mail exchanges with native speakers and data interpretation for their own research led to reinforcement of existing stereotypes for some of the learners. Future e-mail intercultural projects would need to consider the importance of involvement from learners, native speakers and foreign language teachers for the joint interpretation of cultural data.
Acknowledgements The project reported in this paper was supported by the departmental research grant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (G 71 56 T 390). I thank Fanny Chow Shuk Kuen for her help with the interviews. I am also extremely grateful to Phil Benson, Alan Davies, Ian McGrath, Sima Sengupta and Liz Walker for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Appendix The project consisted of the following stages. 1. Initiation: The participants were divided into four groups, each consisting of seven to eight Hong Kong JFL students and one Japanese student. 2. Topic Selection: Each group decided on a topic for their intercultural survey. Three of the groups (Groups A, B and D below) chose from a list of possible topics suggested by their instructor, while the remaining group (Group C) decided on their own topic. Table below shows the topic choice of each group:
Group A B C D
Topic Love Family Consumption habits University life
No. of participants HK
Japan
8 8 7 7
1 1 1 1
3. Introduction: Initial free e-mail discussion by four groups (e.g., self-introduction) (duration: approximately 2 weeks). 4. Free discussion: Within each group, the Hong Kong students exchanged e-mails both among themselves and with the Japanese native speaker. The
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Japanese students sent e-mail messages to individual Hong Kong students and also to the group as a whole. All of the e-mail messages were copied to their instructors. 5. Research discussion: The group discussed by e-mail how to devise a questionnaire for an intercultural survey of Hong Kong and Japan on a specified topic (duration: approximately 10 weeks). 6. Questionnaire administration: The intercultural survey was administered in Hong Kong and Japan (approximately forty to eighty respondents in each place). The results were then exchanged between the two places (duration: approximately 2 weeks) 7. Data analysis: The group wrote up a project report (duration: approximately one-and-a-half months)
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Soh, B.L., Soon, Y.P., 1991. English by e-mail: creating a global classroom via the medium of computer technology. ELT Journal 45, 287–292. Ting-Toomey, S., 1999. Communication Across Cultures. The Guilford Press, New York. Valdes, J. (Ed.), 1996. Culture Bound. Bridging the Cultural Gap in Language Teaching. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Warschauer, M., 1995. E-mail for English Teaching: Bringing the Internet and Computer Learning Networks into the Language Classroom. Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Inc, Alexandria, VA.
Changing cultural stereotypes through e-mail assisted foreign language learning§ Hiroko Itakura* Department of English, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon,Hong Kong, China Received 26 March 2002; received in revised form 12 March 2003; accepted 15 April 2003
Abstract This paper explores the question of how cultural stereotypes are formed, modified, dismissed or reinforced, drawing on findings from a collaborative intercultural e-mail project between Hong Kong learners of Japanese at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and native Japanese speakers at Kagoshima University. It also evaluates role of e-mail assisted projects in breaking down the stereotypes. Analysis of the data collected from e-mail exchanges, project reports and interviews with the participants suggests that, first, the cultural assumptions of learners are formed on the basis of various types of inputs from the target culture. Second, the level of assurance that the learners felt about the accuracy of cultural representations appears to be related to the types and origins of the input from the target culture. Third, there may be a hierarchical relationship of inputs in terms of the degree of impact each type of input from the target culture has on forming the cultural stereotypes of learners. Those based on remarks from native speakers and classroom teaching appear to be more influential than those based on the mass media and hearsay from fellow learners. Fourth, although the project enabled the learners to validate and modify their previous assumptions, it also created new stereotypes or reinforced existing ones. # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: Stereotypes; Foreign Language Learning; E-mail; Culture; Japanese; Hong Kong
§
This paper is a revised version of the conference paper ‘‘Using E-mail for JFL & Intercultural Awareness’’ presented at JALT 2001, Kitakyuushuu, Japan, with Sachiko Nakajima. * Fax: +852-2333-6569. E-mail address: [email protected] (H. Itakura). 0346-251X/$ - see front matter # 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.system.2003.04.003
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1. Introduction There is a widely held consensus that enhancing intercultural understanding is a crucial part of foreign language teaching. Teaching of culture in foreign language teaching has traditionally been defined as the transmission of information about the people of the target culture (Kramsch, 1993, p. 205; see also Hinkel, 1999, pp. 1–7 for an overview of traditional and recent approaches to the teaching of culture). More recent approaches to teaching culture in the foreign language classroom, however, have encouraged diversified, flexible and sensitive ways of looking at the target culture and interaction with target language speakers (Byram, 1997; Byram et al., 2001; Cortazzi and Jin, 1999; Harrison, 1990; Kim 2001; Kramsch, 1991, 1993; Lantolf, 1999; Valdes, 1986). It is also increasingly recognised that learners should be provided with opportunities to conduct their own research on the target culture so that they will be able to acquire skills to process, analyse and integrate various kinds of data. For example, Byram (1997) advocates that culture seen as a static object should be abandoned in foreign language teaching in favour of methods that focus on equipping learners with the means of accessing and analysing any cultural practices and meanings they encounter. Byram and Esarte-Sarries (1991) also emphasises the importance of learners’ becoming ethnographers (see also Robinson-Stuart and Nocon, 1996), while Kim (2001, pp. 106–108) suggests that it is important for learners to develop ‘cognitive complexity’ in processing information related to the target culture so that they will be able to consolidate seemingly diverse and even contradictory pieces of information into a meaningful and integrated whole. Another important aspect of inercultural understanding is to promote learners’ critical awareness of their own culture as well as the target culture, and develop the ability to analyse data from their own and another culture and establish the potential relationship between them (Byram, 1997; see also Honna, 1999). To reflect this recent trend, e-mail has been widely used to assist projects designed to promote intercultural understanding in foreign language learning (Crowe et al., 1996; Galloway, 1995; Liaw and Johnson, 2001; Oliva and Pollastrini, 1995; Soh and Soon, 1991; Warschauer, 1995). Various positive effects of e-mail assisted projects have been reported. For example, Liaw and Johnson (2001) report that university EFL students in Taiwan and pre-service bilingual ESL teachers in the USA developed their own views of interpreting the target culture, new ways of looking at the target culture and sensitivity to cultural differences through e-mail correspondence. Galloway (1995) also reported a raised awareness of cultural relativity as an outcome of an e-mail project involving Japanese university EFL students and students in the USA. Soh and Soon (1991) claimed that EFL students in Singapore and ESL students in Quebec were able to learn to look at and assess their work and the works of others from different perspectives through an e-mail project. While a number of ‘success’ and benefits of e-mail assisted intercultural projects have been reported in the literature, there is a dearth of literature that critically evaluates such projects and informs foreign language teachers of possible pitfalls involved therein. Such projects may have a negative impact, for example, of creating
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or reinforcing existing cultural stereotypes or ‘‘exaggerated set of expectations and beliefs about the attributes of a group membership category’’ (Ting-Toomey, 1999, p. 161). As Kramsch (1993, pp. 207–210) argues, stereotypes are ‘tenacious’ and may be reinforced even when they are contradicted by direct observation of the target culture and have proven to be false. It is therefore possible that learners reinforce stereotypes during such projects when they obtain new information on the target culture from its native speakers, rather than developing more sensitive views. While stereotypes may facilitate the learner’s comprehension of unfamiliar behavioural patterns, they can easily lead to intolerance towards out-group members and impede intercultural communication (Jandt, 2001; Kim, 2001; Ting-Toomey, 1999). They are formed on the basis of various types of information about the target culture: including information disseminated from the mass media, advertising and experiences of encounters with the target culture. Factors such as learners’ mood when processing the new information, the size of the groups being stereotyped and their physical appearance are also said to influence the formation of stereotypes (Gudykunst, 2001, pp.122–133). Once formed, cultural stereotypes are not easily dismissed. Instead, they are likely to be retained or even become reinforced. In order to promote diversified and sensitive ways of viewing the target culture, it is therefore necessary to understand how cultural stereotypes are formed, and when they may be dismissed, modified or reinforced in particular contexts of learning. This paper evaluates an e-mail assisted intercultural project in relation to its effect on the formation or breakdown of stereotypes among the foreign language learners. The project incorporated a systematic collection and analysis of data from their own and the target culture in order to provide them with opportunities to conduct research. It focuses on the following questions: (a) what kinds of input form the basis of stereotyped assumptions about the target culture, (b) under what circumstances these assumptions may be dismissed, retained, modified or reinforced and (c) how the learners made sense of similarities and differences between their own and target culture through data collection? More specifically, the paper addresses the question of whether learners’ assumptions about the target culture are affected differently depending on the origins of the existing cultural assumptions and types of newly acquired input. These questions are investigated by analysing multiple sources of data collected from Hong Kong learners of Japanese language and culture in the course of their participation in an intercultural e-mail project with native speakers of Japanese from Japan.
2. Profile of learners and the intercultural e-mail project Thirty JFL students at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and four Japanese students at Kagoshima University, Japan, participated in the intercultural e-mail project. The JFL students were all Cantonese speakers in their second year of an undergraduate programme (BA in Languages with Business). At the time of the
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project, they had learned Japanese for approximately 330 h and attained a lowerintermediate level of proficiency. The four Japanese students were all native speakers of Japanese in their second year of their degree course in International Understanding. The main objective of the project was to increase knowledge about Japanese language and culture (for the Hong Kong students) and Hong Kong culture (for the Japanese students) and to enhance intercultural understanding between the two groups. The Hong Kong students, who are the focus of this paper, divided themselves into four groups of seven or eight, each of which was matched with one native speaker Japanese student. Each group chose a topic for an ‘intercultural survey’, in which they would investigate similarities and differences between attitudes to life in Hong Kong and Japan held by the Japanese and Hong Kong students. For example, one of the groups chose ‘love and marriage’ as their topic. After the group members introduced themselves to each other, they exchanged e-mail on the similarities and differences of people’s attitudes towards love and marriage in Hong Kong and Japan. They then designed a questionnaire to investigate this issue among Hong Kong and Japanese university students, which was administered to approximately 50–80 university students in each location. Questions included issues of marriage with a foreigner, co-habitation and pre-marital pregnancy, and age differences between a husband and wife. Topics for the other three groups were ‘family’, ‘consumption habits’ and ‘university life’. Responses to the questionnaire were exchanged between the Hong Kong and Japanese students. At the end of the project, the participants wrote a project report (in groups for the Hong Kong students and individually for the Japanese students) in which they analysed and synthesized the data (for details of the project, see the Appendix). All e-mail exchanges and project reports were written in Japanese.
3. Data The following types of data were collected in the course of the project and formed the basis of the present study: E-mail messages (approximately 300 in total written by 30 Hong Kong students) Four project reports (written by groups) Interviews with nine Hong Kong students on their cultural experience during the project, changed views on the target culture and evaluation of the project These data were analysed in order to find empirical evidence for the three questions mentioned above. The e-mail exchanges were analysed in order to investigate the range of input that formed the basis of stereotyped assumptions about the target culture [Question (a)] in Section 4.1. In Section 4.2, I will examine the interview data in terms of the nature of learners’ assumptions and their modifications over
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the course of the project [Question (b)]. Section 4.3. will look at one of the project reports in order to explore the question of how learners interpreted similarities and differences between the two cultures through data collection [Question (c)].
4. Findings 4.1. Target culture input and formation of cultural stereotypes Analysis of the e-mail exchanges showed that the stereotypical assumptions of Hong Kong students about Japanese culture were supported by a range of sources including the following: (a) hearsay from fellow learners of Japanese (b) the mass media (especially comic books and television) and (c) classroom teaching. Below, I will illustrate each type from the data and discuss its nature (with my emphasis). (a) Hearsay from fellow learners of Japanese as a foreign language [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKP Jan 2001] According to my friends, Japanese teachers are very strict. Is this true? Are there many kyouiku mama (i.e., mothers who are strongly involved in their children’s education)? What are Japanese teachers like? (b) The mass media: comic books [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKJ 9 Jan 2001] I read a (Japanese) comic book yesterday. The content of the comic book was that final-year graduate university students in Japan want to obtain jobs and they use various means to get one. For example, they go to visit alumni of the university before they take the examination in the company.... For them, getting an unofficial offer is what matters. Are your friends encountering a similar situation? Do you think you will be in a similar situation when you are in your fourth year of study? (c) The mass media: television news [E-mail message (translated from Japanese): HKA 26 Dec 2000] According to the news, the cost of living in Japan is very high. I would like to find out more about consumption habits of Japanese people (through this project) A common discourse pattern observed in the examples above is ‘‘My assumption about Japanese culture is ‘X’ (which I gained from ‘Y’ [informational source]). What is the actual situation?’’(where Y may refer to various sources of information on Japanese culture that the learners had previously encountered, including the mass media, comic books, conversations with their friends, and their own personal observations). These data suggest that learners are aware that assumptions based on these sources may be inaccurate. They also suggest that learners may believe that native speakers know the ‘actual situation’ and that their assumptions can be validated by information directly obtained from native speakers of Japanese.
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Analysis of the e-mail messages written by the Hong Kong students found seven instances in which they sought validation of the information gained from various sources with their Japanese interlocutor (see (a) to (c) above for examples). Of these seven instances, four concern the validity of information gained from the mass media such as newspapers (two instances), television news (one instance) and comic books (one instance); two seek validity of hearsay from their fellow learners; and one of personal observations about the target culture with a Japanese interlocutor. (d) Classroom teaching While examples were found where learners sought to validate assumptions based on input from the mass media and fellow learners with their Japanese interlocutors, the data contained no examples where learners tried to validate the information provided by their teacher. Analysis of e-mail exchanges between Hong Kong students and Japanese students did not find the pattern ‘‘I heard Y from my teacher. Is this true?’’. Classroom teaching or what learners hear from their teachers, however, appears to be an important source of cultural input. One of the students (HKP), for example, stated during her interview: Interview excerpt (1) (translated from Chinese): Interviewer: HKP:
Interviewer: HKP:
Where does your general impression come from that Japanese people are under great pressure? Er for instance. . . I feel they work very seriously, treat their boss as their top priority, and treat the teacher as their top priority. Students are students. Japanese people are very disciplined. As their life is constrained by everything, I think they are under pressure. Where do you get the information? The teacher (i.e., her tutor in one of her business subjects) says that people are very disciplined in Japan. I mean, in this subject we learn about Japanese culture.
Although the scope of data collected for the present study is limited, this suggests that classroom teaching may be more influential in the formation of stereotypes than other sources for these students. 4.2. Modification of cultural stereotypes The discussion so far suggests that the input that forms the basis of stereotypes comes from various sources and that learners may be aware of the need to validate the accuracy of stereotype. In this section, I will analyse the interview data in order to explore how existing stereotypical assumptions may be changed, by focusing on the outcome of interactions between previous assumptions and a newly obtained input that contradicted them. The interview data identified two sources of information from which learners had previously obtained information on the target before the project: the media and
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classroom teaching. It also identified two kinds of new information that the learners obtained during the project: remarks made by native speakers of Japanese during e-mail exchanges and project findings from their joint intercultural surveys. The previously obtained information (i.e. the media and classroom teaching) and new information (i.e. native speaker’s remarks and project findings) contradicted each other in three different ways: (1) newly obtained project findings contradicted previous classroom teaching (two instances); (2) newly obtained project findings contradicted previously held assumptions gained from the mass media (five instances) and (3) newly obtained remarks from native speakers contradicted previously held assumptions based on the mass media (three instances). 4.2.1. Contradiction between new project findings and previous classroom teaching Both learners who reported that their project findings contradicted what their former teacher taught them in classroom modified their new project findings. Classroom teaching seems to be highly influential in the formation of cultural stereotypes for the students in this study. Assumptions about Japanese people that learners formed on the basis of what their teacher had previously taught them seemed to be retained, although in a modified form, even when learners obtained new information during the project. For example, during the interview, Student HKP said that, on the basis of information from her teacher, she believed that Japanese people were hard working even to the extent of sacrificing their own life (information given not by her Japanese instructor but by the lecturer of a business subject). She had therefore predicted that the results from her group’s survey would confirm this (i.e., that Japanese university students would be subject to greater pressure and stress than Hong Kong students). However, the results were different from her predictions. Commenting on the mismatch, she did not dismiss the information from the teacher. Instead she made qualifications on the range of applicability of the project findings: that they are only applicable to a specific group within Japanese society. This suggests that learners may become more aware of cultural diversity; for example, the existence of geographical differences within the foreign culture when the new input contradicts their former classroom learning. However, classroom learning still appears to be retained as the representation of the mainstream culture, while the students’ own project findings were represented as a description of the peripheral culture in remote areas of Japan. 4.2.2. Contradictions between new project findings and previously held assumptions based on the media In four out of the five instances where newly obtained input gained from the project’s findings contradicted the previously obtained input from the media, the stereotypical views based on media representations were modified. For example, another student, HKN, had predicted that the survey on spending habits would reveal that Japanese students tend to spend more money on fashion than Hong Kong students but the project’s findings contradicted this. The excerpt from her post-project interview below illustrates how she dealt with the contradiction:
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Interview excerpt (2) (translated from Chinese): HKN:
Interviewer:
HKN:
. . .Why I thought the Japanese spent much money on fashion is from watching Japanese dramas and TV programmes. [There, Japanese people] spend a lot on it. And when I read magazines, I see Japanese people dressed very nicely. This is why I had predicted they would spend lots of money on fashion. OK. Well, your prediction was different from your findings from the survey. Well . . . what do you think about it now? Now, I feel it depends on different parts of Japan. If you talk about Shibuya or Tokyo or large cites like these, people pay much attention to their appearance and what they wear. If we go to some remote area like Kagoshima or Beppu [where the survey took place], [Japanese] students aren’t frivolous and don’t spend much money on fashion.
In this excerpt, she attributes the contradiction between her prediction and project findings to geographical differences within the culture of Japan (the respondents of her questionnaire were residents of a remote area of Japan). Her stereotypical views on Japanese culture as culturally homogeneous were modified to allow for more cultural diversity. In the remaining example where new project findings contradicted the previous assumptions based on the media, the interviewed student reported that information obtainable from television is more reliable than that from the project, as the former is based on a larger quantity of data analysed with more depth. 4.2.3. Contradiction between the remarks from a native speaker and previously held assumptions based on the media In all three instances where newly obtained remarks made by their native-speaking Japanese interlocutor contradicted learners’ existing assumptions based on the media, their previous assumptions based on the media were modified in light of the native speaker’s remarks. The learners changed their existing cultural stereotypes of Japanese people owing to what their native-speaking group member said during their e-mail exchanges. For example, Student HKE’s prior views of Japanese students as hard working changed because her Japanese group member JT said they were not. During her interview, she explained this, as follows: Interview excerpt (3) (translated from Chinese): Interviewer:
. . .in the past did you believe that Japanese university students studied very hard?
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HKE:
Interviewer: HKE: Interviewer: HKE:
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Right. Because I watched many TV dramas and I sometimes read comic books. [There] Japanese people commonly wear headbands that say ‘‘Study!’’ Well, [there they are] really studying all the time. This gave me the impression that Japanese people might be under a lot of pressure and are always studying hard. Mm, mm Hong Kong students are different. They are a bit like ‘‘They dig wells when they want to drink’’. You’ve changed your way of looking at the situation [because of the project]? Right, because I was able to e-mail to a Japanese university student and ask him questions directly. He replied to me saying that this was not the case. He said that he didn’t study very hard, that he studied only during the examination, that he would not go home every day and start studying wearing a headband ((laughs)). In the past, I believed that there were people like those [whom I saw on TV and comic books]. But he said no.
Her interaction with a native speaker therefore seemed to have undermined her stereotypical views of Japanese culture formed from the mass media. Another student, HKNO, appeared to modify previous cultural stereotypes based on television programmes upon obtaining a native speaker’s remarks on Japanese marriage: Interview excerpt (4) [English interview with some editing]: HKNO is talking about his experience of corresponding with his Japanese interlocutor, JT, by e-mail. HKNO: We used to have certain ideas about Japan but after I communicated with JT, I think there is something- there are some differences between what the media say about Japan and what JT said.. . . He said, I remember he said that Japanese people are not keen on the idea of getting married. Yeah. But in our mind, [Hong Kong students tend to assume] Japanese girls would like to marry a good man when they graduate. But then JT said that Japanese girls would not like to do so, and that they would not like to marry after they graduate as they would like to pursue their career. The remaining student, HKN, stated during her interview that information obtained from even one native speaker of the language is more reliable than knowledge gained by reading books. She further went on to say that reading books and attending classes is sufficient for a superficial knowledge of Japanese
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culture, but that it is difficult to verify knowledge obtained by such means. If you want to get real knowledge of Japanese, you need to speak with Japanese people. These examples suggest that cultural input from native speakers may be strongly influential, even if it comes from a single person. However, while such input may undermine cultural stereotypes and facilitate the emergence of a more complex view of the target culture, it has also the potential of constituting a new stereotype when what the native speaker has said is interpreted as a representative description of the target culture. 4.2.4. Summary In sum, in a majority of the cases where newly obtained cultural input via the project findings contradicted previously held assumptions based on the media, the previously held assumptions were modified. In both of the cases where new project findings contradicted previous assumptions based on classroom teaching, previous classroom teaching was mostly retained. In all three cases where new native speaker’s remarks contradicted previous assumptions based on the media, the previous assumptions based on the media were modified. Although the data was limited, the analysis suggests that there may be different degrees of influence among various cultural inputs. It also suggests that when learners obtained new cultural inputs, their previous assumptions may not necessarily be modified. For example, while newly obtained project findings and native speakers’ remarks appeared to be strongly influential in modifying previous assumptions based on the media, the newly obtained project findings seemed to be less influential for the modification of previous classroom teaching. 4.3. Reinforcement of stereotypes Analysis of the interview data has shown that new project findings on student life between Hong Kong and Japan often modified the previous assumptions of learners about the target culture, possibly allowing for more diversified views. This section will examine one of the project reports to discuss yet another aspect of the projects: they may reinforce existing stereotypical assumptions. When the students interpreted results from their intercultural survey, they often evoked stereotypes of Japanese culture as well as those of their own culture to endorse them. Below are two such examples of excerpts from one of the project reports (my emphases): Excerpt from project report (1) (translated from Japanese): . . . The number of [Japanese] people who responded that they would consult their father [if they have a problem] is small. This is because the image of the Japanese father is very strict. Many Japanese people responded that they would consult their mother. This is because Japanese mothers are very kind. . . Many Hong Kong people responded that they would consult their friends.
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Excerpt from project report (2) (translated from Japanese): ‘‘. . . Hong Kong men were found to do more housework than Japanese men. We think an important factor here is the fact that Hong Kong has received influence from Western culture and Hong Kong women are ‘career fighters’, ‘demons for work’ or ‘iron ladies with a career’’’. It appears from these excepts that when the learners obtained the target culture input that matched their existing assumptions, they endorsed them by invoking cultural stereotypes of the target culture as well as their own culture, with the possible effect that their existing cultural stereotypes were reinforced. Below is a similar example: Excerpt from project report (3) (translated from Japanese): [Writing about the results from the survey question ‘‘Who has the most power within the family?] Although we hear that the status of Japanese women has become higher, the number of Japanese people who said the mother has the most power was only 22 percent. . . The reason is that Hong Kong women and Japanese women have different personalities. Japanese women are always kind while Hong Kong women are powerhungry. In this excerpt, learners endorsed project findings on a Japanese mother’s lower power at home by invoking traditional images of Japanese women as possessing a lower social status and also stereotypes of Chinese women as career-oriented. Such polarized assumptions of the native and foreign cultures may have the effect of accentuating the differences, thus reinforcing existing stereotypes.
5. Discussion The study showed that the e-mail intercultural project was effective in promoting more sensitive and complex views of the target culture in two main ways. First, the e-mail exchanges with a native speaker of the target language enabled the learners to modify existing stereotypes formed on the basis of sources such as the media and hearsay from their fellow learners. Contact with a native speaker via e-mail also encouraged the learners to become more aware of the limitations and problems of cultural stereotypes and to negotiate the validity of their previous assumptions. Second, the study also demonstrated the importance of encouraging the learners to conduct their own research on cultural phenomena (Byram, 1997; Byram and EsarteSarries, 1991). This appeared to help the learners to develop more careful attitudes in handling intercultural data, more attentiveness to the processing of cultural inputs, and more thoughtful ways of viewing the target culture and their own culture. But although the project appeared to benefit the participants, some less positive negative aspects have also been revealed. First, the learners were found to be greatly
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influenced by remarks made by native speakers to the extent that they sometimes formed new stereotypes. This is reminiscent of what Kramsch (1998) has said about the power of native speakers in the foreign language classroom: that the ‘native speaker is always right’. Not only are native speaker intuitions called upon to resolve doubts about linguistic issues but they also seem to be turned to with respect to culture. Although the project emphasised the learners’ roles as co-researchers, the Hong Kong participants appeared to see the Japanese participants as figures of authority during the e-mail exchanges and also when interpreting the data. The classroom teaching also appeared to be strongly influential in that the Hong Kong learners did not modify what they had previously heard from their teachers, when it was contradicted by new cultural information. Instead, remarks made by their teachers were retained, albeit with some slight modifications, despite contradictory new information. Second, during their attempts to integrate newly obtained information from their project with their existing assumptions about the target culture, the learners were observed to invoke cultural stereotypes of both their own culture and the target culture to endorse newly obtained information. This appeared to lead to some accentuation of their perceptions of differences between the two cultures and reinforcement of cultural stereotypes. This suggests that the following points should be taken into account in the foreign language teaching practice and the design of e-mail assisted intercultural project. First, the learners need to be encouraged to interpret remarks made by native speakers and also the foreign language teachers more critically, while native speakers and foreign language teachers need to be made aware of the potentially strong impact of their remarks on the formation of stereotypes for their non-native interlocutors and students. The view that they should be in the position of figures of authority as sources of cultural information (e.g., Byram and Esarte-Sarries, 1991) needs to be reconsidered. Second, the ‘risk’ in pairing the learners with a single native speaker, which was unavoidable in the present project, should be recognized. The opportunity to obtain diverse views of the target culture voiced by more than one native speaker may decrease the chance that the learners will form new stereotypes. Regular meetings between the teacher and learners should also be held during such projects to discuss how to interpret remarks made by the speakers of the target language. Third, the process of data analysis and synthesis may also require group discussion involving the learners, native speakers, and teachers as co-researchers so that the accounts can be collaboratively interpreted from various angles.
6. Conclusion Although the scale of the present study was small, I hope that the findings presented in this paper will be able to contribute to the understanding of stereotypes in the learning of foreign languages and cultures. The analysis has shown that learners’ assumptions about the target culture are formed on the basis of various sources of previously obtained inputs, which may vary in terms of relative strength of influ-
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ence. It has also been demonstrated that the relative impact of previously obtained and newly obtained target culture inputs may condition learners’ future assumptions about the target culture. The e-mail intercultural project has been shown to benefit the learners in different ways to develop more sensitive and complex views on culture. However, its less positive effects have also been revealed. For example, e-mail exchanges with native speakers and data interpretation for their own research led to reinforcement of existing stereotypes for some of the learners. Future e-mail intercultural projects would need to consider the importance of involvement from learners, native speakers and foreign language teachers for the joint interpretation of cultural data.
Acknowledgements The project reported in this paper was supported by the departmental research grant at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (G 71 56 T 390). I thank Fanny Chow Shuk Kuen for her help with the interviews. I am also extremely grateful to Phil Benson, Alan Davies, Ian McGrath, Sima Sengupta and Liz Walker for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
Appendix The project consisted of the following stages. 1. Initiation: The participants were divided into four groups, each consisting of seven to eight Hong Kong JFL students and one Japanese student. 2. Topic Selection: Each group decided on a topic for their intercultural survey. Three of the groups (Groups A, B and D below) chose from a list of possible topics suggested by their instructor, while the remaining group (Group C) decided on their own topic. Table below shows the topic choice of each group:
Group A B C D
Topic Love Family Consumption habits University life
No. of participants HK
Japan
8 8 7 7
1 1 1 1
3. Introduction: Initial free e-mail discussion by four groups (e.g., self-introduction) (duration: approximately 2 weeks). 4. Free discussion: Within each group, the Hong Kong students exchanged e-mails both among themselves and with the Japanese native speaker. The
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Japanese students sent e-mail messages to individual Hong Kong students and also to the group as a whole. All of the e-mail messages were copied to their instructors. 5. Research discussion: The group discussed by e-mail how to devise a questionnaire for an intercultural survey of Hong Kong and Japan on a specified topic (duration: approximately 10 weeks). 6. Questionnaire administration: The intercultural survey was administered in Hong Kong and Japan (approximately forty to eighty respondents in each place). The results were then exchanged between the two places (duration: approximately 2 weeks) 7. Data analysis: The group wrote up a project report (duration: approximately one-and-a-half months)
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