ABSTRACT
There were four adult students in the Better English Online course that I was observing. Two students were from Ghana, one was from Iran, and one was from Poland. Each week they had to select an article to summarize for the online class. By summarizing, they were working on reading, writing, and discussion skills. In the process, the teacher had them build vocabulary and focus on specific grammatical problems. As I was observing this online class one thing struck me-I was intrigued about how we were all connected in this online classroom with little notion of which cultures we each were part of or where we were situated in the world. The students were brought together in this online language learning course with one thing in common-they wanted to improve their English-however, they all had different approaches to this class that were based on their culture and place. For example, the students and teacher did not interpret deadlines in the same way, and there were different approaches to the collaborative aspects of the course. Slowly students lost interest-they were absent from the course for a week, and one even dropped the class. What happened? I believe cultural differences contributed to the conflicts of communication in this course. An online class with students from diverse backgrounds and cultures requires
cultural awareness and the ability to understand a wide range of cultural perspectives and world views.
