Peer-reviewing in an intercultural wiki environment - studentinteraction and reflections

Journal article, 2014

The increase in the use of the web for learning purposes matches today’s demands on language learners finding ways of developingboth language skills and intercultural communicative competence. This paper reports a case study investigating an educationaldesign in technical writing where non-native English speaking students collaborate with native English speaking students. Inthe exchange, the students work with peer review as a way of refining texts to develop discursive, linguistic, communicative aswell as intercultural communicative competences. The results show some key insights into peer reviewing practice in web-basedasynchronous environments where the students gradually get used to ways of giving and receiving feedback. There is a great variationin peer comments, displaying a high number of revision-oriented, elaborated formulations. Furthermore, the outcomes show thatbeing engaged in an intercultural peer review exchange implies getting an insight into aspects of communication and dimensions offeedback from someone outside of one’s own disciplinary field and from another culture. Some of the core issues of interculturalexchanges are related to skills in mastering expressions of other cultures than one’s own and critical awareness.