O n f e r e n c e

Short paper 
Since the mid-1990s, accessing the World Wide Web has made it possible for a range of 
information about other countries to be brought into the classroom, and by the year 
2000, Internet searches in which students sought cultural information from foreign 
websites had become a very popular part of language learning classes (Fischer, 2013). 

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-317- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
This tendency has continued since the early 2000s, and means of gaining knowledge and 
understanding of other cultures through technology has been an increasingly “hot” topic 
in CALL research (Chun, 2006). Recent years have also seen terminology such as cultural 
knowledge, cultural awareness, cross-cultural understanding, intercultural understanding, 
and intercultural competence starting to appear in various areas of research and 
development in CALL. However, a trend that has also been evident in much of this 
research is that a clear definition of these terms is often omitted, and there is a lack of 
focus in the cultural aspects. This has resulted in the blurring of many key terms, such as 
the difference between acquiring cultural knowledge and developing intercultural 
competence. For example ,many studies have claimed that students developed 
intercultural competence through sharing information about certain cultures, but in fact, 
although the term “intercultural competence” is related to some extent to specif
ic cultural 
knowledge, it also refers to understanding attitudes, beliefs, values, and interpersonal 
skills with people from different cultural backgrounds (Kim, 1991; Wiseman, 2002). 
Therefore, obtaining cultural knowledge and developing intercultural competence are not 
the same. Furthermore, even though many researchers have offered models for 
intercultural competence training (e.g., Byram, 1997; Howard 
et al.
, 1998; Neuliep, 
2011; Stier, 2003; Ting-Toomey & Kurogi, 1998), education related to intercultural 
competence that balances cognitive, affective, and behavioural learning with language 
learning and capitalizing upon the potential of technology is still relatively scarce in the 
literature. There is a good deal of research where developing cultural awareness has 
been cited as one of the outcomes of a study, but these are often based on unplanned 
results through participants’ interaction with interlocutors or resources from different 
cultural backgrounds. That is to say, given that there has been little or no cultural 
education or training provided to participants from the outset, and that enhanced cultural 
awareness is an almost incidental outcome, there are many cases where claims regarding