Summary of A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM:ELECTRONIC DISCUSSION AND FOREIGN LANGUAGE LEARNING

In the abstract part of the article, general information about what it deals with is given briefly. It is mentioned that four students called Fleurie, Laura, Eleanor, and David who learn French and speak English do a study in which they investigate the effect of electronic discussions in cultural practice. They try to certify it by sending messages to a forum on the Web site of the French newspaper Le Monde. As for the history of Fleurie, Laura, Eleanor, and David, they were in the on-line discussion pages of Le Monde. Fleurie and Eleanor are interested in improving their French with pen-pals while Laura and David are interested in racism and cultural imperialism. In this light, this article handles the use of electronic discussion in language learning for intercultural communication.
The newspaper Le Monde used in the case study which is dealt in the article include on-line discussion groups. People can post messages via the site Forums Le Monde, and series of debates appear in a list in which the messages are written. The four students mentioned above introduce themselves and their aims to be there in different ways in the forum. So, the answers they get are quite different because they change according to the way they write their messages. In the communication process of the forum, it is seen that David and Laura are more productive, so it is understood that effect of linguistic accuracy or politeness is not very much in intercultural competence.