O n f e r e n c e

Meei-Ling Liaw*, Kathryn English**
*National Taichung University of Education, Taichung, Taiwan 
**Université de Paris II, Paris, France 
[e-mail], kathryn.english@wanadoo.
fr 
Identity and Addressivity in Telecollaboration 
Bio data 
 
Meei-Ling
 Liaw
is professor of the Department of English at National Taichung 
University of Education. Her research focuses on using computer technology to facilitate 
EFL teaching and learning, intercultural learning, and teacher education. Her publications 
have appeared in professional journals including 
System, Foreign Language Annals, 
Computer-Assisted Language Learning, ReCALL
, and 
Language Learning and Technology
. 
She has been serving on the editorial board of 
Language Learning and Technology
since 
2008. She is also the editor-in-chief of 
Taiwan International ESP Journal
.
Kathryn
English
is a Maître de conférences at the Université de Paris II (Panthéon 
Assas) and the Ecole Polytechnque. She holds a PhD is in Sciences du Langage and has 
designed, co-authored and participated in Cross-cultural, computer-mediated language 
teaching projects based in the USA, France, Finland and Taiwan. She has worked as a 
conference interpreter for the European Union, Television and Radio, the French National 
Assembly. She also coaches the university debating teams. 
Abstract 
Learning is a social activity that takes place through communication or interaction with 
others (Vygotsky, 1978); the keys to successful learning in telecollaborations are 
participants’ sense of intimacy and social presence in the community. In an on
-going 
intercultural telecollaborative project involving Taiwanese and French university students, 
we utilized a self-introduction activity, About-Me-Bags, to connect the two groups. The 
activity required that each participant choose three objects, representing their past, 
present, and future, to present to their intercultural learning partners. The presentations 
were done by posting PowerPoint files and text documents on a project website. All of the 
participants then read, made comments on, and asked/answered questions about any of 
the postings. The objective of the activity was to create social affordances (Kreijns & 
Kirschner, 2001) that allow the participants to engage in sustained, topic-focused 
exchanges on which their sense of intimacy and community could be based. 
To understand whether the activity achieved the intended objective and how the