Interculturality

Modern Europe witnessed a historical simultaneity as the result of which , not only Europe ruptured from its own past, rather a forced attachment to the non- European's future was also forged. This historical "development" has been narrated in the "colonial discourse". On the other hand, for the non–Europeans, however, a different historical simultaneity took place. Hence; the colonized/non -Europeans found themselves forcefully ruptured not only from their own selfhood, but also thrown in an imposed 'state of nature' dispossessed of their identity. This historical experience has been narrated in the "post-colonial discourse". The current paper is an attempt to host a 'meeting' between the colonial and the post-colonial discourses.

Following a case study research design, the present paper reports on a cross-cultural project (called Ibunka2019), in which the author monitored his English as a Foreign Language (EFL) writing classes. The project is an email-based exchange among learners of English from six countries (Algeria, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and the Netherlands). For data collection, the Algerian participants’ emic perspective was accessed via their self-reports, gained by a post-project online survey; besides, their messages produced as well as the discussions with them during and after the project made valuable retrospective data for the present study. Particularly, the study discusses the merits of the project relative to the writing module, manifestations of learner autonomy, and the challenges encountered. Moreover, it tackled other relevant issues, namely the integration of interculturality, EFL learner mindset, and lingua franca perspective. This study adds to the scarce literature within the Algerian context on telecollaborative EFL teaching and learning