The online milieu: integrating social media for developing EFL learners’ ICC at an Algerian context

Globalisation, technology, and immigration are common expressions which lead to interculturalism (Fantini, 2019). There is an agreement in the literature that the teaching of language must be accompanied with the teaching of culture (Byram, 2021; and Baker, 2022). In accordance with competency-based approaches, educators have repurposed the focus of language pedagogy towards developing the learners’ ability to communicate effectively in the target language. Similarly, higher education institutions are focusing more on nurturing interculturally competent students who are able to function effectively in today’s multicultural environments. Despite these recent proliferations which empower a more integrated model of Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) into the field of EFL, developing ICC is not a simple task (Fantini, 2019). Departing from such foundational premise, this doctoral thesis aims to formally use a Facebook-mediated intercultural learning design, to cultivate EFL learners’ ICC. Our research study aims to bring the area of digital interculturality into practice. A mixed-methods research approach was adopted to assess the extent to which Social Media (SM) can be repurposed for educational purposes. In addition, it also investigates the role of SM for ICC teaching and learning. Action research was followed to examine the pedagogical potential, and challenges, of our proposed Facebook-mediated intercultural learning design. In this regard, there was a pedagogical intervention that scrutinized Facebook as a tool for creating an online intercultural learning environment which aims at developing EFL learners’ ICC. Data was collected through surveys, students’ comments to the activities posted on their closed Facebook group, reflective essays, in addition to follow-up interviews by the end of the pedagogical intervention. A survey was also conducted with their EFL teachers to explore their perceptions of intercultural teaching through SM. Analysis of the elicited data followed a thematic analysis in conjunction with NVivo, an analytical software which was used for coding both quantitative and qualitative data. The analysis demonstrates the social medium Facebook as an effective tool for creating an enjoyable, collaborative, online intercultural learning environment. The participants described this environment as a window that opens to other cultures. Despite that the use of SM for intercultural learning rings positive, an unexpected challenge in employing Facebook in our context appeared when students observed SM as 'distractive technologies’. Therefore, we further emphasise that a better environment for SM and language learning may well be established in a beyond the classroom environment, as an intercultural development and informal language learning context.