| This study presents a detailed description of Thai EFL classroom interaction that occurred when two modes of text-based CMCs, namely, asynchronous and synchronous electronic discussions were used as a prelude to oral discussion. This study was aimed at examining how these two modes of CMCs serve as a tool to facilitate participation and interaction in classroom discussions, as well as how they serve as a tool to possibly provide or inhibit opportunities for Thai students to acquire four communicative skills, namely, speaking, listening, writing, and reading.; The setting was a college Basic English four-skills course whose teacher was a Thai researcher-teacher. The participants included 19 Thai sophomore students from three major fields: Engineering, Information Technology, and Business Administration. The student participants were required to do out-of-class electronic discussion on asynchronous CMC-webboard, in-class electronic discussion through synchronous CMC-chatroom, and in-class oral discussions on the topics closely tied to the electronic discussions. Data collection included the transcripts of data from the webboard, the chatroom, oral discussions, and interviews, questionnaires, and fieldnotes.; Results show that after the use of text-based CMCs as a prelude to oral discussion the classroom IRE pattern in electronic based oral discussion changed. There was more participation, democratic equalization, and student-student direct interaction. The students were involved in critical discussion, tutoring and teaching each other, and negotiating meaning without the direction of the teacher. The use of complex language in terms of lexical and syntactic complexity doubled. The analysis of the data shows that the pre-discussion on the webboard and the chatroom as well as the fast-paced interaction/spontaneity of the chatroom played an important role in improving the fluency of listening and speaking skills. The formality and complexity of language on the webboard served as an excellent medium for pre-writing work. The webboard also allowed an exclusive opportunity for the students to write regularly and be exposed to written texts. As a result the webboard served as a tool to facilitate the acquiring of writing and reading skills. The variety of language functions used by the students in the chatroom also helped improve English on the basic able-to-communicate-ideas level. |
