An ethnographic study of a key-pal project: Learning a foreign language through bilingual communication

This study investigates the effect of a cross-cultural bilingual communication project on students' second language learning. A collaborative key-pal project was conducted between Japanese university students learning English and Canadian university students learning Japanese. Ethnographic data were collected from the students' exchanged messages to examine whether the project provided students with opportunities for language learning. If so, what were the common types of language learning? How did students use the two languages in their bilingual communication? We also investigated what factors might facilitate or inhibit frequent and dynamic message exchanges. The data indicated that the students learned a great deal through the exchanges both at the vocabulary- and syntactic-level. However, counter to our expectation, explicit error corrections were very rare. It was also found that understanding of the language level, strength of communication skills, and shared interest affected their communication and the success of this kind of project.