Issues and Negotiations of Taiwanese Students` Email Communication: Implications for Teaching Online L2 Writing

Abstract

A qualitative study was conducted to investigate Taiwanese students` negotiations when communicating with native English-speaking students via email. The findings showed that Taiwanese students strove to negotiate four issues to maintain cross-cultural communication-power, writing style, social distance and rhetoric. Focusing on the Taiwanese students, the study identifies discursive and non-discursive strategies used by these students in dealing with the four issues that they encountered during their email communication.