A Business Writing OIL (Online International Learning)

Abstract

Online International Learning (OIL) helps to integrate soft skills into the academic curriculum, as well as providing students with international interaction opportunities. In this article, we evaluate the extent to which telecollaborative writing tasks between UK-based (mostly Chinese) and Finnish students over an online platform can benefit academic writing learning experience and contribute to curriculum and materials design in EAP. In the article, there are two groups of learners from different geographical contexts, Finland and the UK. The Finland-based students are almost all Finnish, while those studying in the UK are mostly from China. In both cases, the target language is English. The students in Finland worked in pairs to create authentic case study materials, and the students in the UK, in what we characterize as “stimulus writing”, produced reports based on the case studies they had been given.