Technology and second language writing: A study in discussion

In the increasingly global world of the early twenty-first century, young men and women across Asia are realizing the value of learning the international language of business: English. This creates a unique opportunity for American universities in that branch campuses of their main U.S. campus placed in Asian cities will have significant increases in population. However, there are some impediments to student success in the American university abroad, the largest of which is a cultural reticence to critical thinking and elaborating on individual opinions. In addition, though Asian students have English instruction from an early age, the language is taught via grammar and reading lessons and with a lecture-style method, not conversationally, so that the typical Asian student finds the American system of recitation and student-centered classrooms quite difficult. Temple University of Philadelphia, which holds the distinction of being the only degree-granting American university in Japan, and is also the one with the largest branch campus of an American university in Tokyo, has been working on this problem for over 20 years. It is in this singular situation that I taught and studied upper-level writing. In my teaching there, I studied the challenges faced by the students and the faculty, and created a constructivist-based pedagogy that incorporated elements of technology to increase the success of second language learners in a composition class.;I found that using computers in a hybrid environment, specifically discussion-based technology within a classroom management tool, increased students' fluency in read, written and spoken English, and additionally led them to overcome their culturally native reluctance to form an interactive community of learners.;The research presented here outlines the cultural confines within which I worked as well as the specific pedagogy I implemented, and then shows the students' success. The study, conducted with only nine students, can serve as a start for more research into the effects of technologically-based pedagogical methods with Asian students, as well as the effects of hybrid classrooms on writing classes.