O n f e r e n c e

participants presented and positioned themselves during the processes of forming 
connectivity, all of the “About
-Me-
Bag” object descriptions and interactive postings 
written by the participants were collected. The social presence theory of Gunawardena, 
(1995) and 
Bakhtin’s (
1986; 1981) conceptions of audience and addressivity were then 
relied on to carefully analyze the data. The findings suggest that the objects selected by 
the participants presented distinctive identities and personas of the participants and thus 
helped to create the physical presences that are normally lacking in online 
communication.

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-238- 
2014 CALL Conference 
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be 
Describing and reading about objects that were of personal significance were conducive 
to the participants’ gaining an awareness of one another’s identities and perceiving their 
interlocutors as authentic, identifiable individuals with whom genuine communication 
could take place. An analysis of the pronouns used in the text postings further reveals 
that addressivity techniques were used by the participants to present themselves, 
maintain social presence, and sustain social interactions. 
Based on the findings, we discuss the importance of identity formation and how it 
influences the conditions for social presence and intimacy which are essential in 
networked-based learning environments. 
Short paper 
This project is an intercultural telecollaborative venture between Taiwan and French 
university students. As globalization intensifies and technology advances, there comes 
the unprecedented need for intercultural communication and understanding. Foreign 
language educators have responded to this need by moving beyond setting 
communicative competence as the instructional goal to helping their students become 
“intercultural speakers” 
(Byram & Fleming; 1998, p. 8) who 
can “establish a relationship 
between their own and other cultures, to mediate and explain differences
–
and ultimately 
to accept that difference and see the common humanity beneath it.”
In this project, we utilized telecollaborative activities to provide English language learners 
of the two countries a means to engage in intercultural exchanges and language learning. 
Based on the belief that the keys to successful learning in telecollaborations are