Giving a virtual voice to the silent language of culture: The Cultura project

By G. Furstenberg, Sandrine Levet, Kathryn English, K. Maillet. Language Learning & Technology, 2001

394 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper presents a Web-based, cross-cultural, curricular initiative entitled Cultura, designed to develop foreign language students' understanding of foreign cultural attitudes, concepts, beliefs, and ways of interacting and looking at the world. Our focus will be on the pedagogy of electronic media, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the Web can be used to reveal those invisible aspects of a foreign culture, thereby giving a voice to the elusive "silent language" 1 and empowering students to construct their own approach to crosscultural literacy. We examine these new areas of cultural knowledge which the Web now renders accessible and attempt to redefine the meaning of foreign language "teaching" in the new world of networked communication.

Subfields: Communication, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/680b842a814562e8d97ceb4bbc4b09d4c04c8383

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Citations in the corpus

Understanding the "Other Side": Intercultural learning in a Spanish-English e-mail exchange (2003, methodology): “Some of these were based on material already placed on-line by the Tandem Network, while other activities were adapted from the Cultura project (Furstenberg et al., 2001).”
Perspectives on Technology in Learning and Teaching Languages (2006, result): “Some of these studies have found positive results through student self-reports, interviews, or surveys (Furstenberg et al., 2001; Kinginger, 2000; Meskill & Ranglova, 2000; Müller-Hartmann, 2000; von der Emde, Schneider, & Kötter, 2001).”
Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence through Online Exchanges (2011, methodology): “The exchange began following the procedure used by Furstenberg et al. (2001) in their Cultura project (http://cultura.mit.edu/).”
Teachers as Intercultural Learners: Negotiating German–American Telecollaboration along the Institutional Fault Line (2003, positive): “Emerging research points to the important contributions that such environments can make to the development of intercultural awareness (Belz & Muller-Hartman, 2002; Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, 2001; Kinginger, 1998; Kinginger, Gourves-Hayward, & Simpson, 1999; Muller-Hartmann, 1999, 200”
Discourse Options and the Development of Pragmatic Competence by Classroom Learners of German: The Case of Address Forms (2003, neutral): “chat, an additional feature of FirstClass (see Belz, 2002, p. 63; Furstenberg et al., 2001; Kinginger et al., 1999; Kramsch, 1993; Mu¨ller-Hartmann, 2000, for the use of parallel texts in [computer-mediated] foreign language teaching).”
Online foreign language interaction: Moving from the periphery to the core of foreign language education? (2009, background): “For example, French and American students are often engaged in comparative studies of the film Three men and a baby with French original (Furstenberg et al. 2001).”
The competences of the telecollaborative teacher (2015, background): “For example, teachers have used online exchange in classroom-integrated projects such as Cultura (Furstenberg et al. 2001), where virtual activities and online interaction with foreign partners are integrated with the activities which happen in class time.”
E-learning and the development of intercultural competence (2006, result): “Similar to the students in the Cultura project developed by Furstenberg et al. (2001), the EFL students in the present study did not learn the target culture as a checklist of knowledge.”
Artifacts and cultures-of-use in intercultural communication (2003, methodology): “…read parallel texts, see the same films, and share personal biographies using e-mail and a form of synchronous chat (using the program NetMeeting; for other parallel class intercultural collaborations, see Furstenberg, Levet, English, & Maillet, 2001; Kinginger, Gouvès-Hayward, & Simpson, 1999).”
Understanding telecollaboration through an analysis of intercultural discourse (2010, background): “Internet-mediated communication has been used by foreign language teachers to create interactive learning environments in which students go beyond a checklist approach to cross-cultural knowledge and literacy (Belz, 2004 ; Felix 2002 ; Furstenberg, Levet, English & Maillet, 2001 ; Rogerson-Revell”
Linguistic perspectives on the development of intercultural competence in telecollaboration (2003, methodology): “Telecollaboration involves the use of Internet communication tools by internationally dispersed students of language in institutionalized settings in order to promote the development of (a) foreign language (FL) linguistic competence and (b) intercultural competence (e.g., Belz, 2002b; Furstenberg e”
Teaching and assessing L2 pragmatics: What can we expect from learners? (2008, background): “…computer-mediated communication (Biesenbach-Lucas 2005; Sykes 2005), and TELECOLLABORATION – whereby language learners engage in projects with students from other cultures through the use of on-line communication tools such as e-mail and message boards (Furstenberg et al. 2001; Belz 2002, 2003).”