| The low efficiency in improving Chinese college students' EFL writing has always been a headache among Chinese instructors. After a comprehensive review into the nature of EFL writing and exploration into the potential of CMC (Computer Mediated Communication) in educational setting, the researcher attempted a tentative solution to the problem: incorporating text-based asynchronous CMC into tertiary EFL writing instruction. The purpose of this empirical research is to explore whether the online forum system has the potential to provide a supporting and caring environment where learners EFL writing competence is able to be cultivated and their EFL writing motivation fostered.The study involves one experiment group whose writing process, collaboratively from preparing, drafting, reviewing, editing to publishing, are exposed to the electronic conferencing system, specifically DVBBS 5.0 Finals & 6.0, and a control group who does the writing assignment individually. After 15 weeks' treatment, even though the experiment group didn't demonstrate superior overall writing competence over the control group, significant improvement still appeared in the writing components of content, organization and vocabulary. A questionnaire investigation on students' perception of the online forum enhanced writing environment was conducted. And the descriptive statistics obtained from SPSS indicated that it was the interactivity and collaborativeness of the threaded forum, its potential to boost motivation for communication and cooperation among students that contributed to the supporting and caring EFL writing milieu, but both the instructor and students needed further training in computer-related editing tools.As a tentative study, the paper has limitations. And the findings in Chinese students online writing need further scrutiny into the conversational features of Chinese students' online "speech" texts. |
PDF Full Text Request