Bridging Students Linguistic and Cultural Gaps in Teaching Reading and Writing
Abstract
This paper reports on the success of a cross-cultural letter-writing project that helped bridge the cultural and linguistic gaps between two groups of students belonging to two different countries. This ELTeCS[1] organized project, basically, a departure from the dull and routine methods of teaching reading and writing, created authentic situations in which a group of Pakistani university students wrote to their Russian counterparts across the border for a full semester about themselves and their cultures. This paper presents the linguistic and content analysis of the letters of the participants written at the beginning of this project and towards its end. The results show a marked improvement in language, style, and content. From the data gathered through semi-structured interviews, the paper also reports on how this project has not only been instrumental in bridging the cultural gap i.e. clearing the minds and hearts of the participants but also the linguistic gap.
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