Multi –Media Educational Communication Strategies for English. A Case Study of an Online Chat Room for EFL as Platform of Applied Language Learning

This paper is part of a cross-cultural study on the difficulties of English dialogues between non-native speakers in a special context where both sides share different linguistic and cultural backgrounds. The paper describes the characteristics of online dialogues by multiple-participants quantitatively comparing them with conditions of non-online dialogue criteria. Everyday communicative activities involve not only two-participant communicative situations, but also those of more than two-dialogue partners. A chat room can serve as a platform for such situations with speech communication. The first part of this paper introduces a general methodology for the development and study of conversational learning process. Our research is interested in a demonstration how online communication can be integrated into a classroom for EFL learning.