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Discussing course literature online: analysis of macro speech acts in an asynchronous computer conference

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 September 2009

Riitta Kosunen
Riitta Kosunen
Affiliation:
University of Oulu, PB 1000, FIN-90014 University of Oulu, Finland (email: riitta.kosunen@oulu.fi)
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Abstract

This paper presents a macro speech act analysis of computer-mediated conferencing on a university course on language pedagogy. Students read scholarly articles on language learning and discussed them online, in order to make sense of them collaboratively in preparation for a reflective essay. The study explores how the course participants made use of computer-mediated conferencing for such collaborative text processing. A discussion thread with 97 messages was analyzed for its macro speech acts. The conference messages were treated as pragmatic macrostructures where micro-level speech act sequences can be mapped onto a higher-level, global speech act or textual function. The discussion turned out to be reader-centred and practice-oriented. Approximately two thirds of the messages were concerned with interpreting theory from a practical point of view, expressing the students’ personal experience, opinion or idea about a certain issue related to the article. In comparison, only one tenth dealt with checking the explicit propositional content of the article. The results are interpreted in terms of the distinction between a narrative and paradigmatic/expository discourse.

Keywords

Computer conferencingcollaborative text processingmacro speech actnarrative and paradigmatic/expository discourse
Type
Regular Papers
Information
ReCALL , Volume 21 , Issue 3 , September 2009 , pp. 337 - 351
Copyright
Copyright © European Association for Computer Assisted Language Learning 2009

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