Thorne, S. (1999). Chapter 3: Educational and Foreign/Second Language Uses of Computer-mediation: A Review of Research. In An activity theoretical analysis of foreign language electronic discourse. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of California at Berkeley.

Chapter 3:

Educational and Foreign/Second Language Uses of

Computer-mediation : A Review of Research

Key words: Computer-mediated communication (CmC), computer assisted language learning (CALL), computer-assisted classroom discussion (CACD), drill-and-practice software, hypertext, human-computer interaction (HCI), microworlds

“What would “something better” look like?”

(Pavel Curtis, 1998)

This chapter reviews a variety of research literatures and technologies concerning the use of computers for the teaching and learning of foreign languages. A comprehensive review of all research areas related to technology and FL/L2 learning is beyond the scope of this chapter. I have, however, tried to include research which is representative of various fields, and those studies which, in my opinion, are better examples of their genre and research focus. This chapter provides a critical framework that illustrates what specific literatures both highlight and put into shadow as a result of their research focus and ideological orientation. Particular emphasis is placed on how research frameworks and the traditions from which they emerge construe the object and/or activity of study in specific forms.

Taxonomy of educational technology: Progress and complexity

Due to the volume and diversity of software environments put into use in foreign language classrooms over the past twenty-plus years, general categories for describing them are crucial, elusive, and, as Hawisher (1994) points out, inherently problematic. Standard classifications include: (1) drill-and-practice programs, (2) games, (3) hypertext books, (4) microworlds, and (5) computer-mediated communication and information. There are a growing number of web-based and video materials that do not necessarily fit into any of these restrictive categories. An example is the project on Quechua, reported on by Kramsch & Andersen (1999), that takes a linguistic anthropological approach to situating learners in the language-culture environment. For reasons of space and focus, web based instructional materials are not substantively discussed in this review, but I do tackle this rapidly emerging and important area in a separate manuscript (Thorne, in preparation). For historically framing primary forms of instructional technology, however, the five categories I list above offer a useful heuristic and show an overall temporal development leading up to the current preoccupation with internet-based communication.

Drill-and-Practice

In second and foreign language education, drill-and-practice software provides untiring repetition of particular language forms, with an emphasis on accuracy, fluency, and speed of performance (Balajthy, 1986). Though offering self-paced advancement and interactive in the sense of selecting between pre-set options, such software often involves a student sitting alone at a computer trying to choose correct answers from a list of multiple choices or supplying “correct input” which is matched against a single possible answer. These drill-based programs, some critics argue, often reduce educational activity to a humdrum rehearsal of discrete subskills (Crook 1994).

The majority of software for language learning falls into this first category. No doubt, part of the appeal stems from a resemblance to the familiar language lab style Audio Lingual Method activities of the past (e.g., structural patterns taught using repetitive drills, structures taught in sequence one at a time, successful responses immediately reinforced, taped dialogues). Faigley, in a compelling book on postmodernity and the subject of composition, discusses Berlin’s critique of cognitive rhetoric (specifically that of Flower and Hayes) and notes that the compartmentalization of composition into discrete units implicitly endorses “the structures of Fordist management” and the representation of the mind “in terms of a rational hierarchy” (Faigley, 1992:19). Such critiques apply to Audio Lingual Methods and are pertinent to much drill and practice software as well.

From a software programming perspective, drill-and-practice activities are attractive partly because computers do such a good job at delivering such material. Expressed critiques aside, drill and practice software has its value as a convenient, multiple media tutorial resource, and the better designed programs can be productively used as an adjunct activity or for self-study. In a Vygotskyan sense, a tutorial program could act as a mediational resource and potentially create or expand the learner’s zone of proximal development. With features such as on-line help, L2-L2 translation (paraphrasing unknown lexical items and constructions in the L2), and guidance for approaching a task or communicative problem, a tutorial could support activity that the learner alone would be unable to accomplish.

Games

A second and not too distantly related category of language software encompasses word games and puzzle programs which, though still tending to focus on isolated skills, at least offer a measure of entertainment. Game-like computer activities can make skill instruction more palatable by increasing student motivation. In contrast to the isolation imposed by drill-and-practice programs, game software at its best can, like Brøderbund’s Carmen Sandiego series (available in several languages), sometimes encourages whole or small group interactions around the computer (Murphy-Judy, 1992). Focusing primarily on the acquisition of vocabulary for Spanish and other more commonly taught languages, Syracuse Language Systems (SLS) has developed a series of games based on sight and sound propositions. Though SLS products were designed for solo use by students, in an earlier, unpublished study I carried out in 1993, SLS games additionally provided a common focus for younger students as they competed with one another to achieve higher levels of proficiency. The subsequent competitive tensions transformed what were designed as stand alone games into arenas of social activity and in-class competitions (Thorne, unpublished manuscript). From an activity theory perspective, the community and community rules that emerged during the repeated use of this computer game produced an unexpected social environment.

Hypertext

The useful but limited link information employed in the Carmen Sandiego series, in which the students physically look up detailed background information in a reference book in order to make sense of the clues on the screen, anticipates a third category of software relevant to second language education: hypertext. In a hypertext information architecture, words or phrases on the screen can be electronically linked to other texts and media representations in an electronic version of what has described as inter-textuality (Kristeva, 1980; Lemke, 1995). While reading, a user can choose to click on and follow a link and later return to and continue reading the original passage. In addition, some hypertext systems allow the student users to create new links themselves.[i] Annotext is an example of software that keeps the main text central and utilizes hyperlinks to supporting information, and users can add their own exegesis and annotations.

This mechanism--the ability to juxtapose passages of text or text and other media--has the potential in second and foreign language education for making background information, vocabulary definitions, grammar explanations, inter-linear translation, commentary, or cross-references immediately and conveniently available to language learners. Moreover, recent research on the social nature of hypertext use in language arts classrooms suggests that the reading and creating of hypertext can be a social activity, involving the explicit connection of many social dialogues (Shen, 1995). The popularization and open access to hypertext afforded by the World Wide Web has created opportunities for a number of student foreign language projects. One of the earliest and still an excellent example is “Découvrir Berkeley!”, a web site designed and composed by 2^nd semester UC Berkeley students of French in 1994. The Berkeley students were in e-mail contact with peers in France. Though these textual exchanges were interesting to the students, the recent availability of the web encouraged the idea of sharing sights and sounds in addition to text messages. For this project, students shot and digitized video, wrote and peer edited essays, and discussed issues of cultural representation as they decided what to portray to their French keypal classmates. Culturally and linguistically, students and the instructor reported the benefits to include heightened self-expression in the foreign language, large amounts of writing to and for a specific and authentic audience, and that the process of having to decide how to represent their home culture increased sensitivity to the cultural forms and stereotypes they had of France.[ii] The interaction and interpretive community that becomes possible when students not only view pre-existing hypertext, but create their own, provide foreign language activities which may enhance motivation and promote a diversity of language practices for language learners.

Microworlds

Seymour Papert coined the term ”microworld“ to describe a kind of computer-based learning environment in which children don’t simply respond to predetermined questions, but actually control when and how events will happen (Papert 1980). In the view of Papert, who holds a constructivist perspective (in the Piagetian sense), people learn by actively constructing new knowledge, and the learning environments software designers create should allow a human learner to exercise ideas or intellectual skills (Papert, 1980). Critics of Papert point out that there are restrictive parameters within which students may be “active builders of their own intellectual structures” (Papert, cited in Roszak, 1994:74). Roszak, a self-proclaimed neo-luddite who is openly critical of instructional technologies, states that “as I read Papert’s words, I found myself haunted by the image of a prisoner who has been granted complete freedom to roam the “microworld” called jail: ‘Stay inside the wall, follow the rules, and you can do whatever you want’” (Roszak, 1994:75). Such contrary voices are important reminders as to the limitations of microworld environments. Roszak’s fear of artificial and parametered freedom, however, can also apply to the epistemology of formal education at large.

The powerful normalizing pressures and strict prescription of legitimate epistemologies and behavior common to educational institutions have been the focus of much incisive criticism (Bowles & Gintis, 1976; Bourdieu & Passeron, 1977; Apple, 1982; Giroux, 1988; McLaren, 1995). My own perspective is that technology offers potential resources for certain types of cognitive and knowledge specific development. The better designed instructional technologies offer neither emancipation nor intellectual incarceration, but rather are implicated in a broad set of institutional, historical, and discursive practices. As this study will emphasize, the contexts created by users of technology, their prior experiences and current uses of technology, and the social and academic objectives of a given activity, both imposed and emergent, call for an analysis that takes these contexts into account (see Thorne, 2000). Despite Roszak’s perceptive sense of the limitations of computer-based instructional software, missing is observation of how technologies are used by individuals (and groups) in concrete circumstances, and the social and developmental constraints and opportunities of concrete activity involving specific tools and artifacts.

Of the growing number of microworlds actually developed--the most famous of which being Papert’s Turtle Logo--there is one strong example that has been used experimentally in foreign language education. Developed at MIT for Project Athena, A la Rencontre de Philippe is a microworld that incorporates users integrally into the story line. Students’ activities and choices direct the movement of the narrative, and a number of outcomes are possible, which makes for diverse story development over numerous playings. Copious language reference material is available (access to help material can be controlled by the instructor), as well as transcriptions of all spoken texts. The French used in A la Rencontre de Philippe has been termed at times unclear, native-like and difficult to understand by some instructors, but it is well-suited to pedagogies that stress authentic language use. The availability of grammatical and lexical references, an additional voice rendition of all dialogues, and transcriptions of all spoken language provide students the resources needed to parse initially incomprehensible streams of phonemes. A major strength of A La Rencontre de Philippe is the Gallic storyline that users are exposed to (boyfriend (Philippe) gets dumped by girlfriend and has to move out of the apartment they share, then must look for a place to live in the horrifically impacted housing market of Paris. In some story endings, Philip reconciles with his girlfriend at the end of the story), and the scrutiny they must give to the dialogue to uncover its nuances.

Missing from Papert’s influential treatise on microworlds--and from the Piagetian theories which inspired it--is any in-depth discussion of the social/interactive aspects of learning (Wood 1989). Not surprisingly, most educational constructed microworlds present their electronic worlds full of virtual objects only to the individual user (Crook, 1994).[iii] Programs such as A La Rencontre de Philippe do in fact act as the focus for collaborative group efforts, which illustrates that well designed tasks and student orientations to the use of microworlds have the potential to make social the interactive environment catalyzed by these programs. Fürstenberg, the principal pedagogic designer of A La Rencontre de Philippe, worked extensively to develop structured uses of this laser disc program. Such careful attention to its use as a resource for collaborative activity is responsible, in large part, for A La Rencontre de Philippe’s positive reception and productive use in French foreign language courses.[iv]

Computer-mediated communication and information

In contrast to the isolation of most constructed microworlds, a fifth and now booming category of instructional technology use is the networked environment, and specifically forms of computer-mediated communication (CmC). The impetus behind educational uses of CmC is language development through social interaction. Over the past decade, the ability to link students by networked computers has opened up a variety of opportunities for language based social interaction in second and foreign language education. Language use over networks provides a variety of communicative situations, many of which are not readily available in foreign language (Cononelos & Oliva, 1993) or composition (Colomb & Simutis, 1996) classrooms.

CmC comes in a number of forms. Asynchronous forms of CmC include email, threaded discussion (also called forums), and bulletin boards[v] (now less frequent due to the ubiquity of the internet). Synchronous communication, nicely described by Ferrara, Brunner, and Whittemore as
“interactive discourse” (1991), is dividable into four main types. Werry (1996) documents the first three as 1) UNIX based TALK, used for one-to-one conferencing; 2) MOOs and MUDS, text-based virtual environments such as CafeMOOlano used to enable the computer-assisted classroom discussion (CACD) analyzed in this study. MOOs see extensive use as role playing environments, as sites for educational activity, and are commonly organized for theme based social interaction; and 3) “Chat” systems such as Internet Relay Chat (IRC) used primarily for thematic social engagement and by interest groups for topically specific discussion. The key difference between MOOs and IRC is that MOOs are built upon a spatial metaphor and IRC is not (MOOs will be described in technical detail in the chapter 4).

There is a fourth and more recent synchronous modality that combines a graphical interface with interactive written discourse. Environments such as The Palace[vi] and Worlds Alive allow users to move through three dimensionally rendered space in the form of icons or virtual figures. Coming specifically to this study, CACD indicates a form of interactive written discourse that occurs in formal educational settings such as classrooms or computer labs. I first came across this term in a paper by Ortega (1997), and find it useful as it juxtaposes the use of real-time conferencing with the school/university setting as institutional location. A primary difference between my work and that of prominent cyber-theorists such as Sherry Turkle and Steve Jones is that my study focuses on the use of internet based tools within the institutional confines of classroom activity. Turkle and Jones provide illuminating and important documentation of the digital cultures flourishing on the internet. The existence of these digital cultures articulate in important ways with contextual, social and discursive properties emergent of CACD. These issues form the entirety of chapter 6, which provides an activity theoretical analysis of the CACD data forming this dissertation.

CmC use in educational settings--text-based communication mediated by e-mail, electronic bulletin boards, local area network conferencing programs like Daedalus InterChange and Aspects, and real-time internet communication tools such as MOOs and forms of “chat”--have become key technologies which make possible the implementation of social constructivist pedagogies. Putting students in direct communicative contact with one another, and distributing the printed transcript of their on-line interaction as data for later written work, brings students thinking and writing into the classroom as legitimate knowledge (Bruce, Peyton, & Batson 1993). Network technologies have helped to initiate a significant pedagogical shift, moving many language arts educators from cognitivist and disembodied assumptions about knowledge and learning as a brain phenomena, to contextual, collaborative, and social-interactive approaches to language development and activity (Hawisher, 1994; Noblitt, 1995; Ortega, 1997).

The ‘electronic writing space’, as Bolter (1992) describes computers for writing, and now internet-based writing and communication, is coming to be accepted as as great a revolution from the Gutenberg press as the Gutenberg press was from hand copied text, and further back, from the invention of scripts and face to face communication. Not only are electronic texts in many ways more plastic than handwritten texts, but via networked computers, the potential audience for such texts, whether as polished written artifacts or a three sentence email message, is beyond the scope of any communication or print technology that existed previously. This late modern communication and information shift is resulting in two substantial, and often-discussed changes. The first is the changing and multivalent structure of ‘texts’ as they are produced and consumed in digital and hypertext environments. The second shift involves a reduction of the time and space constraints which characterized pre-digital and pre-internet communication and information practices.

The activity theory foundation for this study makes the claim that the structure of texts, and textual, literacy, and communicative practices, are tightly bound to the materiality of their conveyance and representation (e.g., stone engravings, paper, computer generated documents, and networked communication). Making an implicit comparison between paper-mediated literacy practices and computer-mediated hypertexts (though not from an activity theory perspective), Landow has argued for the need for a new paradigm, saying “we must abandon the conceptual systems founded upon ideas of center, margin, hierarchy, and linearity and replace them with ones of multilinearity, nodes, links, and networks” (1992:2). The relationship between medium, the structure of texts, and literacy practices, is addressed by Lanham this way, “Sooner or later, … electronic texts will redefine the writing, reading, and professing of literature …” (Lanham, 1993:1). Lanham, concerned primarily with rhetoric and the teaching of humanities, makes an even stronger statement later on: “Electronic technology is full of promising avenues for language instruction; it will be lunacy if we do not construct a sophisticated comparative-literature pedagogy upon it” (1993:23, cited in Noblitt, 1995:269). By this, Lanham is emphasizing the need to adapt our pedagogies to accommodate the changing social material conditions that electronic texts and communication create. Like Landow, Lanham does not base his views specifically on an activity theory approach, but his overall perception of strong relationships between material conditions and social-cultural expression (base-superstructure relations in the terminology of Marx), in this case digital information and communicational artifacts and the social-linguistic practices that they make possible, aligns closely to the theoretical approach I develop in this dissertation. In this sense, the critical theory substrate which implicitly evokes Marx’s base-superstructure relations can be seen to permeate Landow and Lanham’s push to illustrate the substantive aesthetic, communicative, and cultural shifts which are resulting from the changing human practices that digital and networked technologies make possible.

The second aforementioned dimension to the everyday practice of digital communication involves a reconfiguration of time and space. Time is flexible as asynchronous and synchronous communication tools (e.g., email, IRC, chat) support communication, across any distance, almost instantly. Email can be composed during non-traditional work hours, allowing individuals to personalize their work schedules.[vii] MOOs and IRC support multi-party real-time discussions in writing and can synchronously accommodate individuals scattered around the globe. CmC supports synchronous and asynchronous textual communication, as well as on-line environments in which disparate participants can simultaneously gather and communicate with one another through a variety of textual, visual and even kinesthetic channels.[viii] These two dimensions--the structural alterations accompanying communication, the production of texts, information storage and retrieval on-line, and increased options for customizing time and space, potentially constitute a new age of community and communications practices.[ix] These changes are rapidly becoming invisible to first world users as they enter the doxa, or undiscussed background, of everyday practice. Barry Wellman, a digital technologies researcher, notes that “New technologies get more exciting when they get boring” (personal communication). Internet communication tools are unproblematic for many of the participants in my study. These students use email, chat, and instant messaging to communicate with distant and local friends, siblings, and even parents and grandparents. The educational uses of real-time conferencing and, not addressed in this study, the production and consumption of web based texts, are indeed as or more interesting now that they are “boring”. With the practices internet communication tools support come new dimensions to existing and emergent social relationships.

Below, I discuss some of the more important empirical studies that have focused specifically on foreign language uses of electronic conferencing. They represent primarily the socio-cognitive and interactionist research traditions within SLA, though Kern, in particular, develops a syncretic approach which combines productive elements from socio-cognitive as well as sociocultural approaches. In a more recent article on technology and foreign language literacy, Kern in fact moves more toward a sociocultural perspective, stating that “Technologies of writing are always tied to particular forms of social interaction and conceptions of literacy” (1998:57). The bond between technology-as-artifacts and human activity will provide a starting point for my later analysis. In this analysis, I attempt to show a dialectic (though not necessarily symmetrical) relationship between technology-artifacts and human uses of them, and the specific characteristics of computer-mediated social interaction that form a heterogenous and functional activity system which supports foreign language development.

Foreign Language Learning in Digital Networked Environments

As I mention at the start of this chapter, the studies I review below provide strong evidence for certain positive claims about the use of synchronous CmC that I am in overall agreement with. This section begins with an example of early research on the foreign language use of a local area network program. In comparison to more recent research, it is impressionistic and less rigorous. The overall conclusions, however, are largely predictive of the findings that more empirical and quasi-experimental research would later come to document.

To assess variable student learning outcomes in a Spanish writing class, an experiment was conducted at the University of Arizona comparing computer-conferencing, word processing, and a traditional class setting.[x] Forty-four students used a CoSy computer conferencing system to engage in writing activities that stressed communication. A second group of twenty-four students used word processing to write compositions, and a third group of fifty students wrote compositions at home using pen and paper. Avots, citing Smith’s findings, reports the following:

“The forty-four students who used computer conferencing demonstrated creativity, progressed in written expression, initiated cooperative learning ventures such as peer teaching and tutoring, and actually spent more time writing than those who used only word processing or wrote compositions at home as in a traditional classroom. Student outcomes demonstrate that an environment which allows for interaction with others at any time beyond class time and without pressure promotes learning as well as acquisition of communication strategies.”

Though Smith’s conclusions remain anecdotal, she formed four hypotheses based on her assessment of the Arizona experiment:

§ Computer-based interaction encourages increased time on task.

§ Computer-based writing promotes creativity as well as accuracy.

§ Excessive emphasis on accuracy can detract from the development of interactive communication skills.

§ Development of advanced organizer and subvocalization techniques affect students’ ability to communicate ideas orally as well as in writing (Smith, 1990:81, in Avots, 1991:141)

More current studies on the use of real-time electronic conferencing for foreign language learning (c.f., Kern 1995; Chun, 1994; Beauvois, 1998; Lee, 1998) begin to illustrate a more complex and empirically substantiated picture of foreign language uses of sychronous electronic communication. Foreign language educators need to know why electronic discourse, in its many forms, would be a productive addition to their already full curriculum. Researchers such as Kern (1995) and Beauvois (1998) address specific dimensions of this question by focusing on the relationships between the use of real-time electronic classroom discussions and oral proficiency (Beauvois) and the differences between electronic discussion and face to face classroom discussion (Kern).

Beauvois has carried out research on foreign language uses of electronic conferencing since the early 1990s. In her most recent work, she conducted a study of 4th semester French students “to examine, under controlled conditions, whether a link between written and oral communication can be established” (1998:94). Two classes participated in Interchange (a local area network computer environment supporting real-time conferencing) sessions once a week, while two control sections conducted an oral discussion on the same topic. Students were randomly assigned. Beauvois then tested both groups at the end of the semester by way of three oral examinations. The Interchange groups achieved significantly better grades on their oral exams than the control groups, which Beauvois suggests may indicate a link between written real-time conferencing and the development of oral foreign language proficiency. Beauvois notes that other researchers have shown increased student motivation and participation, especially in composition and L1 settings, while established linkages between electronic conferencing and oral competency have been at best anecdotal. In her study[xi], the “overall superiority of the oral expression in the exams of the experimental group surprised the researchers and teachers” (1998:108). Beauvois breaks down what she posits are contributing factors to her study’s positive outcome. Electronic conferencing allows students to “communicate at will” with “no turn taking (i.e., waiting for others to respond to a given question)”, and to do so with other students as well as the instructor (1998:103). Adopting SLA’s default “input” metaphor, Beauvois notes that CmC sessions contribute to “more contact with the target language than is possible in the traditional classroom”, and that “more input, or more intake (Lee and Van Patten, 1994), leads to more proficiency in the target language” (1998:108).[xii] Though grades on oral proficiency examinations are not an ideal indicator of language development, Beauvois rightly asserts that the findings of her study provide a starting point for evaluating the use of networked classroom discussion as a tool for improving oral expression in a foreign or second language.

Kern’s students used the electronic conferencing program Daedalus InterChange, the same local area network software Beauvois used with her students.[xiii] Putting numbers to the notion that foreign language students communicate more in electronic conferencing environments than they do in large group face-to-face classroom settings (in the quasi-experimental conditions he analyzed), Kern compiled the following statistics from one of his second semester French courses. From a 50 minute InterChange session on the topic of the French RU 486 abortion pill, the total number of student messages, or turns at talk for the period, was 172, teacher messages were zero, and each student averaged 12.3 messages for the period. In comparison, an oral discussion by the same students on the same topic produced 95 student turns at talk, 116 instructor turns, producing an average student production of 5.3 turns for the face to face discussion. The students in Kern’s study produced between twice and three times more turns, and more total number of sentences and words, when they were interacting via InterChange when compared to the large-class oral discussion on the same topic. In his conclusion, Kern states that “compared to oral discussions, InterChange was found to offer more frequent opportunities for student expression and to lead to more language production” (Kern, 1995:470).

Beauvois (1998), Kern (1995; 1998), and Pratt and Sullivan (1994) all note either anecdotally, or in Kern’s case, with empirical evidence, that students produce more language, submit more turns at talk, and participate at high levels in electronic conferencing sessions. Ortega (1997), in a thorough review article of L2 computer-assisted classroom discussion brings forth some limitations to research comparing computer-mediated classroom and whole-class oral discussions. Ortega opens up the question of group size and communicative task as variables not accounted for in Kern (1995) and others (e.g., Beauvois, 1992; Chun, 1994; Kelm, 1992) research. She argues that “it is justified to hypothesize that group size and equality of participation are negatively related in traditional oral interactions and positively related in computer-assisted interactions, and that the benefits of electronic over non-electronic interactions will increase with the size of groups ... In other words, the positive equalizing effect of the electronic mode will be accentuated when comparing larger groups, as in the comparisons of teacher-fronted, whole-class discussion with whole-class electronic discussion.” (Ortega, 1997:86) Ortega also points out that communicatively oriented L2 pedagogies often encourage small group work rather than whole-class discussions which may limit the usefulness of a comparison between CmC and oral whole-class discussion. Her issue here is intuitive but not empirically substantiated even as a “hypothesis”, and I present my reasons for disagreeing with her below.

Whole-class teacher led discussions do indeed produce participation structures which differ from small group and dyad work (e.g., Mehan, 1982; van Lier, 1996). Additionally, there are well documented hypotheses about the benefits to group work (e.g., Long, 1989). But large group CmC does not always produce an overall increase in full-group participation nor increased per participant language production. These entailments seem to be an inherent, unexamined assumption on Ortega’s part. In my own study and work with foreign language electronic discussion over the past years, the production of groups over 12 or 14 in number can require an overwhelming amount of reading for some students. Numbers upward of 18-20 tend to produce a tier of prolific and experienced or more advanced foreign language users who can read and post messages at the pace required to keep up with the current development of the multiple conversational strands. A second tier of students, however, may feel overwhelmed by the reading alone, and their participation rates, measured by the number of posted messages, may drop as the number of participants increase (this point is substantiated in both my quantitative analysis in discussion with students in my interview data).

To make these issues yet more complex, coming again from my interview data, students who became overwhelmed with the number of messages coming onto their screens did not necessarily feel like they were not engaged. They rather felt as though reading and following the various strands of conversation was already enough excitement and they did not, or could not, participate directly as contributors (further discussion of this point follows in a later analysis chapter). This latter point elicits the potential need to disambiguate “participation” from “engagement”, and calls for studies that would control for the number of participants and activity type at the etic or systemic level of analysis, while also explicating the emic, or user relative understanding of the activity (via think-aloud protocols and/or in-depth interviews). I agree with Ortega’s call at the end of her paper that “if task processes and task conditions are left outside of the scope of inquiry”, the uses of CmC for foreign language instruction “constitutes yet another ‘black box’ [in reference to Long, 1980] in L2 classroom-based research” (1997:92).[xiv] Close attention to the imposed organization of the activity under study, and even closer attention to the dynamics and goals of the participants as the activity is underway, are critical guidelines for the advancement of research on L2 computer-mediated classroom discussion.

A necessary follow-up to the issue of language production is the quality of language students produce. This is an especially important question for institutional language classes since there is only so much time in a foreign language curriculum for structured language activities. How does the quality (and not mere quantity) of student produced CmC language compare with oral discussions or written work that could be taking place instead (the above discussion of task and activity types, and participant numbers aside for the moment)?

Beauvois does not assess the linguistic quality of her students’ computer-mediated foreign language use (as this is not the focus of her study), but includes her impressions that InterChange sessions were marked by “freedom of expression, full class participation, openness and honesty …” (1998:107). Kern does examine the linguistic quality of electronic conferencing discussions, and his analysis reveals that “students’ language output was of an overall greater level of sophistication in terms of the range of its morphosyntactic features and in terms of the variety of discourse functions expressed” (Kern, 1995:470). In a 1994 study of 4th semester German foreign language students, Chun concludes that the students she looked at demonstrated increased morphological complexity in their written work over the course of the semester (greater ratio of complex sentences). Additionally, and in agreement with Kern’s findings, Chun’s German foreign language students used a wide array of discourse features in their use of real-time networked computer discussions.

In a forthcoming study, Pelleteiri has taken an interactionist SLA approach and applied it to foreign language synchronous written discourse (Pelletieri, in press). I will briefly spell out tenets of the interactionist paradigm in preparation for a discussion of Pelletieri’s significant study. Negotiation of meaning is a core component to interactionist approaches to foreign and second language acquisition studies. The hypothesis is that non-native speakers may experience (or be given tasks that precipitate) communicative breakdowns that require negotiation to resolve. The negotiation process can include modifications on both a linguistic and interactional level, and these modifications are presumed to increase the comprehensibility of the talk at hand (e.g., Long, 1985; Pica, 1987; Varonis & Gass, 1985). Comprehension, or more specifically “comprehensible input” (Krashen, 1982), has been argued to foster L2 acquisition (for Krashen, in a way similar to L1 acquisition) and promote the development of a learner’s interlanguage. The notion of communicative output, first discussed by Swain (1985), offers a corrective to the emphasis on communicative input by claiming that input is decipherable through largely semantic processing while output requires the communicator to syntactically parse and process the target language. These dimensions to communicative output are hypothesized to promote a conscious attention to morphological and syntactic form, and salience to form is in turn argued to foster interlanguage development (e.g., Long, 1996; Schmidt, 1990).[xv] Pelletieri adopts this understanding of SLA processes and profitably applies it to the analysis of intermediate Spanish language learners using a Ytalk[xvi] (Unix based) synchronous communication tool.

Pelletieri’s research contrasts with that of Kern (1995), Chun (1994), and Beauvois (1998) in a few important respects. She focused only on dyads and provided specific and often closed tasks (e.g., jig-saws), whereas most research on FL CACD (including this one) has examined larger group interaction in relatively open topical discussions. Pelletieri concluded that her participants negotiated at all levels of discourse, and that this prompted the learners to produce form-focused modifications to their turns. She posits that dyad work encouraged more corrective feedback than larger group discussions would have. This corrective feedback “was demonstrated to result in the incorporation of target language forms into subsequent turns” (Pelletieri, in press). Additionally, task type--specifically goal oriented closed tasks--was positively correlated to the quantity and type of negotiations produced. Pelletieri, along with Kern (1995), notes that participants have more time to monitor and produce their turns and that this may “play a significant role in the development of grammatical competence among classroom language learners” (Pelletieri, in press). The foundation for my own research diverges from the interactionist approach taken by Pelletieri. This said, her work is useful as it examines synchronous digital communication at the micro-interactional level and descriptively shows that negotiation and feedback can encourage a focus on form in CmC settings. Commensurate with Pelletieri’s conclusions, in my interview data students discuss a heightened awareness of and concern for form in CACD (see Chapter 6).

In her “linguistic elements” discussion, Beauvois refers to the written communication in electronic conferencing as “speaking” (in quotations). It is unclear how she theorizes the language activity occuring in her data, and “speaking” presumably indicates an implicit acceptance of the “hybrid oral-written genre” approach describing electronic discourse. With attention to the difficulty of He continues by making the circumscribed claim that “during an InterChange session students may operate essentially within an oral framework, even though the medium is written” (1995:460). In a recent article on foreign language literacy, Kern (1998) compares written communication by pen and paper to written communication linguistically characterizing electronic discourse, Kern notes that the language in his data represent an “outgrowth of students’ social

interaction, and its form reflects that context” (1995:460). mediated by MOO technology and provides the following contrastive table:

This table addresses dimensions of MOO environments not taken up in this study, namely the spatial metaphors upon which MOOs are based and the presence of virtual objects and textually defined communication spaces. I do, however, provide a description of these features in a later chapter (Chapter 5). Kern accurately portrays MOOs as “electronically mediated social environments” (1998:81), a gestalt description I endorse. The critical features in the table above are that a writer’s input is reframed by the computer, that co-presence creates an expectation of immediate response, and that computer-mediation provides for one-to-one and one-to-many communication, like conventional literacy media, and also many-to-many communication which is unique to electronic discussion. Though Kern does not make this point, synchronous many-to-many communication in writing has only been possible since the advent of networked computer-mediated communication.

Addressing social-affective dimensions to CACD, Beauvois notes that students generally have a positive attitude toward computers and that this may increase their interest in CmC. Over time, however, “students seemed less amused by the technology … and more adept at using the [electronic conferencing] program as a tool toward expressing their ideas” (Beauvois, 1998:108). This latter point is substantiated in my own study as well. Electronic conferencing is a skill, and as students become accustomed to CmC, and more skilled in using this environment to express themselves and interact with their peers, they are able to utilize and create social and material resources which support their on-line activity. One of the features of extended on-line interactions with the same group of people (classmates in Beauvois’, Kern’s, and my research) is the development of communities of a sort. I will purposely close off a more extended discussion of “community” in terms of my own research since I address this in later chapters. For this review of the literature, however, Beauvois and Kern both mention the development of a sense of community that shares a “common language” (Beauvois, 1998:109), and provides cross-cultural insights and celebration which potentially would not emerge in whole class face-to-face discussion (Kern, 1995, 1998).

Available foreign language research, such as that reviewed above, has contrasted the pedagogy, social and linguistic dynamics, and potential learning effects of real-time CmC mediums on language use and learning by FL students. Linguistic analysis of computer-mediated language use provides additional insights into the linguistic nature of on-line communication and helps to define the foundational question of whether CmC, by its mediational qualities, changes human interaction, or whether human patterns of communicative activity colonize digital media in relatively stable, RL (real-life or “non-digital”) forms. Especially for textual digital environments where extensive log file records exist, ascertaining the linguistic dynamics of language use are empirical questions, and such studies, currently few in number, add tentative pieces to the complex, and like culture, ever evolving, CmC puzzle.

I report now on a large-scale linguistic study of real-time CmC. In a corpus based empirical analysis, Yates discusses a comparison between (presumably native speaker) English language corpora of three distinct kinds: oral, written and electronic conferencing discourse. For analysis, Yates used Halliday’s three-way analytic framework focusing on textual, interpersonal, and ideational functions of language. Yates found that the language used in his CoSy electronic conferencing data illustrate an interesting mix of features that include considerably greater lexical density than the speech corpora, and hence show the electronic conferencing sample to be quite close to the written discourse corpora in this textual aspect. An examination of the interpersonal linguistic features of these three corpora showed that the electronic conferencing data included a greater proportional use of 1^st and 2^nd person pronouns than either the speech or writing corpora, and thus that in this regard the synchronous digital corpora was more like oral speech than writing. The last measure focused on Halliday’s ideational function of language and measured the frequency of use of modal auxiliaries across the writing, speaking and digital conferencing corpora. By this measure the digital conferencing data showed the greatest use of modals from among all three corpora. He included in his analysis a count of modals of obligation and necessity, ability and possibility, epistemic possibility, volition and prediction, and hypothetics. Yates cites an earlier research project of his and notes that qualitatively, the “contextual use of modal auxiliaries within CMC is comparable with that of speech” (Yates, 1996:45). In his concluding remarks, Yates revisits Halliday and states that “an important difference between genres and modes of communication lies in the semiotic field in which the communication takes place” (1996:45). Yates gives the example of a doctor-patient interview. Extending this notion to this project, the formal institutional qualities of higher education, the societal context for this study if you will, is the semiotic field within which genre and modes of communication come together in communicative use. I will foreshadow one of the key findings of this study by mentioning that “semiotic field”, in the discursive sense meant by Halliday and also Bourdieu, is more complex in my study than the institutional dimension of the local setting where CACD is taking place. I will touch on this point again in Chapters 5 and 6. Returning to Yates, when the question is how language use varies across media, Yates’ work demonstrates the usefulness of a corpus-based empirical approach to the modeling of CmC discourse.

One of the advantages to this prior research into foreign language uses of digital communication is that these studies and their data and analysis can act as a base-line against which to compare other data. The examples above serve these purposes. The research forming the empirical portion of this dissertation project is approached from a set of assumptions about language, interaction, cognition, and development, which are not yet well represented in the second and foreign language research, examples of which I have described above. The psycholinguistic and socio-cognitive approaches, whether stated explicitly or implicitly represented by a set of terms and assumptions about language development, have yielded productive research results without which my current work would be impoverished. Such research has begun to map out the interactional dynamics of CACD (Kern, 1995), the relationship between CACD and oral examination performance (Beauvois, 1998), and the effects of CmC on the development of L2 morphology and syntax (Pelletieri, forthcoming). At the same time, and explained in Chapters 1 and 2, sociocultural and activity theory approaches to FL uses of CmC will bring out dimensions of context which are still blank spots on the map for the aforementioned research approaches.

Sociocultural and cognitive science studies of educational uses of computer technologies

Cognitive scientists were one of the first academic groups to become seriously and experimentally interested in human-computer interaction. Cognitive science encompasses diverse approaches to the study of human mental functioning and development. As I discussed in Chapter 2, there have been substantial critiques of cognitive science paradigms based primarily on their lack of serious attention to variability, context, and the historical-cultural specificity of situated cognitive activity. Norman (1991), one of the foremost of this traditional cognitive science group, has begun over the last decade to incorporate elements of Soviet psychology into his model in quite productive ways. In part based on influences from psychological models focusing on mediation, Norman develops the concept of thinking about devices such as computers as cognitive artifacts, which he describes as “artificial devices that maintain, display, or operate upon information in order to serve a representational function and that affect human cognitive performance.” (1991:17) Historically, a psychological and anthropological focus on artifact mediation probably began with Wundt (1916), and then was later taken up by the Soviet socio-historical movement (Vygotsky, Luria, Leont’ev). This line of research has continued to the present among post-Vygotskyan theorists (Engestrom, Cole and Wertsch for psychology; Lantolf, Frawley, and Donato for SLA).

Though most current psychology research focuses on the “unaided mind”, principally humans in controlled-setting experimental conditions who are unassisted by external or environmental artifacts, Norman seeks to “integrate artifacts into the existing theory of human cognition” (1991:18). Norman discusses two views of artifacts that are implicit to cognitive science. The first is the “system” view of artifacts. The system view is often the perspective of the analyst/research. The idea is that an agent, artifact, and task are seen as a system, and the system can “accomplish more” with the artifact in question (e.g., pencil and paper for math problems, a computer for word processing, email communication for multi-party decision making). The other is the “personal” or emic view. Through artifact mediation, an actor will sense that “the task has changed: thus [from the actor’s perspective], the artifact does not enhance cognition--it changes the task” (1991:20). Norman makes clear the point that artifacts viewed as cognitive “amplifiers” is a misleading metaphor. He instead argues that artifacts “change the nature of the task being done by the person and, in this way, enhance overall performance” (1991:19).

Bellamy begins a paper on educational technology by discussing research which suggests that the introduction of technology into schools can catalyze educational change (Papert, 1980; David, 1991; McClintock, 1992; Dwyer, 1994). Her critique of this research is that the authors do not explicate why technology instigates change, nor what technologies might most benefit schools. Bellamy bases her thesis, that mediation can explain why technology “has the potential to reform” the educational system, on Cole & Engestrom’s work (1993), whose argument is that the actions of individuals occur at the nexus of three factors; the tools and artifacts available (computers, languages), the community and the understood laws of the community, and the division of labor in these community-settings (roles, interactional dynamics). Participatory design (Ehn, 1988) and situated action approaches (Suchman, 1987) are pointed to as good design processes for educational technology.

Bellamy (1996) draws on Ringstaff, Kelley, and Dwyer (1993), who discuss four factors influencing how and if technology changes the educational process: psychological factors (teachers being comfortable), technical support, ease of access, and collegial and institutional support. Out of her own work and that of others, Bellamy suggests three Vygotskyan principles for the design of educational technology: 1) cultivate authentic activities (this notion of “authenticity” is problematic, see Chapter 6, section 6.6), 2) encourage construction of artifacts, 3) collaborate in peer and expert-novice groupings. Bellamy (1996) summarizes by saying that technology can change educational processes since artifacts (including literacy, computers, and chalk boards) mediate human activity. In short, change the mediating artifacts and the nature of human activity will also change (the degree of change in communicative processes due to mediation by CACD is discussed at length in Chapters 5, 6, and 7). At the level of implementation, the change of an artifact needs to also potentially include change at the level of the explicit philosophy of education/learning held by the teachers, administrators, and software designers.

Discussion

The internet has transformed earlier developments in computer-assisted language learning, moving students from ‘stand-alone’-authoritative language learning software to open, highly social, network-based communication environments. Small group interaction, tutorials, and real-time class discussions take place in these social spaces. There is nothing more or less “real” about computer-mediated or face-to-face social interaction. Put another way, “cybersociety” theorist Jones argues that face-to-face communication promotes no better or more ideal a communicative process than do other communicative situations and mediums (1995). Artifacts such as an internet conferencing environment used for CACD, for example, take their form and significance from the human activities they mediate, and cannot be fully apprehended from a positivist vantage point as simply or generically “there” in the world.

This study

The question of whether digital mediation of L2 social interaction substantively alters the activity of communication, and in what relevant ways for the learning of a foreign language, is still unanswered in the SLA literature. In Chapter 5 of this dissertation, I show that the mediational qualities of CACD do produce demonstrable effects on the way communication is carried out. The issue of which of these differences makes a difference (as the adage goes), is the focus of Chapter 7 of this dissertation.

[i] Hypertext authoring environments such as StorySpace support collaborative authoring and “open” hypertext documents. Internet based hypertext webs began as largely closed to user-modification, but this is changing as more open and collaborative web spaces are being experimented with, and some of the technical impediments are being worked out.

[ii] The “Découvrir Berkeley!” site is available at [www.itp.berkeley.edu/french/main.html]

[iii] Gaming technologies have become collaborative, multiparty events due to internet based technologies. Due in part to significant development budgets and the goals (to generate thrills versus set of learning activities)

[iv] A La Rencontre de Philippe was filmed by a French filmmaker, and therefore provides another valuable attribute--a example of French cinematic style.

[v] Bulletin boards are accessed by phone lines. A user or member accesses a particular machine by dialing in through a modem. Unlike internet access, however, bulletin boards are isolated computers.

[vi] The Palace can be found at [www.digitalspace.com/avatars/palace.html]. See also MIT’s Media Lab for experiments such as “Chat Circles” [www.media.mit.edu]

[vii] Information is also more widely available than it was during pre-digital days. Via the world wide web, access to and transactions with information are not bound by the hours of the library, book store, bank, or stock broker.

[viii] Kinesthetic dimensions to interface design, called “haptic interfaces”, are currently still experimental. An example of the kinesthetic dimension is resistance through touch using a roller or joy stick that is linked to another user.

[ix] Claims for ‘global’ change elicit the many issues of equity and distribution of the material well being necessary to support computer mediated communication. Though much of the world is in fact networked, the most obvious examples of on-line discourse communities are at present still largely from the Americas, Europe, and East Asia.

[x] This research is cited in Avots, 1991. The original study was published by Smith (1990), “Collaborative and interactive writing for increasing communication skills” in Hispania 73, 77-87.

[xi] Beauvois terms this a pilot-study, presumably because the diagnostic tool was subjective instructor grades of oral exams. She notes, however, that each instructor covered both an experimental and control group section, which would potentially lessen comparative bias in his or her grading practices. A future study will follow the pilot-study in methodology, but additionally will include inter-rater and intra-rater reliability checks.

[xii] I will offer a refinement of the notion of turn taking and the nature of on-line communication in a later chapter. For views on input-uptake metaphors in SLA, see Chapter 2. What is important is that the ontological basis for foreign language studies are predominantly rooted in the input-output framework, and that my research is oriented in a different direction.

[xiii] As a reminder to readers, Daedalus Interchange supports synchronous communication in writing, and in this sense supports communicative activity that is comparable to the MOO interaction data of this study.

[xiv] Ortega’s review article of L2 computer-assisted classroom discussion is based on the interactionist approach to second language acquisition. Despite the fact that I have critiqued such a position (Thorne, forthcoming), I wish to acknowledge Ortega’s incisive and well argued article. In her concluding comments, she pushes for the very research questions and vantage points which this work attempts to render, namely an illustration of the relationships between CmC data (log files), self-reported data from participants, and observations by the analyst. She states, and I agree, that an integrated analysis of these issues “will enable a more accurate assessment of the ways in which [computer-assisted classroom discussion] fosters self-regulatory learning and communication strategies and of the impact of such strategies on SL performance in the electronic mode” (1997:92).

[xv] Some of what I perceive to be limitations to the interactionist paradigm can be found in Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation. A diverse group of researchers and agendas are engaged in the interactionist approach, but for the most part, they appear to retain the terminological inertia of the engineering-computational metaphors common to cognitive approaches.

[xvi] Ytalk provides two users with a split screen. Unlike most synchronous communication tools (including the MOO used in my study) where messages appear on the group screen in their entirety, Ytalk shows messages as they are being constructed, key stroke by key stroke. Though not discussed by Pellettieri, watching as messages are being typed allows from real-time back-channeling that is not possible with MOO, IRC, or other forms of multi-party CmC environments. Delayed back-channeling, as documented by Cherny (1996), does occur among some MOO and IRC speech communities however.

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Pen and paper writing

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