Resumen de Developing Kazakh students’ intercultural awareness and communication through collaborative technologies
Perizat Yelubayeva, Aliya Mustafina
Intercultural communication is a fundamental aspect in EFL classrooms since language teaching (LT) classrooms have tended to provide learners with environments to improve their cultural awareness and intercultural communication in the academic discourses. Researches of both spoken and written discourses have demonstrated that linguistic phenomena are related to their society and culture. The present paper is concerned with the impact of using collaborative technologies to create a relaxed and open atmosphere for language learning, increase retention of cultural background knowledge and stimulate both creative and critical thinking during language classrooms at Kazakh Ablai Khan University of International Relations and World Languages. This paper outlines the culture-aware collaborative technologies founded on task-based approach within a discourse view of language, culture and communication, and presents the findings on how those culturally sensitive communication tasks in foreign-language teaching can influence people to succeed in collaboration with the target language users in a sociocultural context. The initiatives to create an intercultural environment and encourage effective intercultural collaboration in EFL classrooms has a positive impact on language learners’ personal and professional development, with greater understanding of social and cultural issues, ethical awareness and intercultural communication.
