Peer-reviewing in an intercultural wiki environment - student interaction and reflections

The increase in the use of the web for learning purposes matches today's demands on language learners finding ways of developing both language skills and intercultural communicative competence. This paper reports a case study investigating an educational design in technical writing where non-native English speaking students collaborate with native English speaking students. In the exchange, the students work with peer review as a way of refining texts to develop discursive, linguistic, communicative as well as intercultural communicative competences. The results show some key insights into peer reviewing practice in web-based asynchronous environments where the students gradually get used to ways of giving and receiving feedback. There is a great variation in peer comments, displaying a high number of revision-oriented, elaborated formulations. Furthermore, the outcomes show that being engaged in an intercultural peer review exchange implies getting an insight into aspects of communication and dimensions of feedback from someone outside of one's own disciplinary field and from another culture. Some of the core issues of intercultural exchanges are related to skills in mastering expressions of other cultures than one's own and critical awareness.