The framework of this study is cooperation between students of English at a Chinese university and their counterparts at a Danish university, i.e. neither group of students are native speakers of English. The theoretical framework for the study is Vygotsky's sociocultural approach combined with the work by a number of researchers on the link between motivation and autonomy. The students were focussing on meaning as well as form in conjunction with the cultural content in a social interactional email-based exchange. The goal of the study was to investigate whether the social connection between the students and the mutual goal of acquainting themselves with each other and each other's culture would enhance their motivation in language learning and in developing desires to express themselves in increasingly comprehensible language at a higher level of correctness. (Contains 3 notes, 2 tables and 1 figure.)