First Year EFL Students’ Perspectives on Digital Technology and Intercultural Communication

Abstract

There is no doubt that nowadays digital technologies provide an avenue and a space where humans, including students across the world, could communicate, send and receive messages, share information, acquire new knowledge, and cooperate with each other notwithstanding the distance that separates them. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to examine a group of first year students’ views on the use of digital media to share or exchange information with contacts with different or similar cultural backgrounds and whether this online cultural communication affects, either positively or negatively, their process of language learning as well as the development of intercultural relationships in the virtual community through the creation of a network of personal connection. It concludes with recommendations for uses of digital technologies that foster deeper learning, and useful intercultural communication to help EFL students advance their learning and acquire 21st century skills.