| Effective interaction and collaboration through computer-mediated communication channels in constructivist online learning environments requires certain levels and types of communicative competence, but what language knowledge and skills do learners, particularly English as a Second Language (ESL) students, need to develop such communicative competence? This study examines the cognitive academic language and social language that occurs in online group collaboration, charts patterns of co-occurrence of language functions, both at specific parts of the collaborative process and between language used for social and cognitive purposes, and investigates how patterns of co-occurrence may indicate larger structures that represent phases of the group collaborative process. Content analysis was conducted on the transcripts of 59 subjects as they collaborated, via an asynchronous WebCT computer conferencing system, in 27 groups on 3 separate projects involving small group creation of demonstrations of methods, lesson plans, and presentations on various issues. The explicit coding and analytic procedure used was the constant comparison method of qualitative analysis, which entailed coding the data from the transcripts into categories as the categories emerged from the data while concurrently analyzing the data, contexts and categories to generate theories concerning relationships, patterns and structures.; Findings of the study indicate that the collaborative process involved 3 distinct phases: sharing information, negotiation of content, and integration. Each phase included specific operations, such as suggestions of content or procedure, with specific language functions consistently occurring within these operations. Another finding indicated that some language used for cognitive and social purposes tended to co-occur in ways that facilitated the collaborative process. These findings help identify the language functions needed for communicative competence in specific online collaborative learning activities. Identification of phases and structures of group collaborative activities can be used to help students develop knowledge of the scripts, the structure of stereotypical sequences, of learning activities that take place within online learning environments. Finally, the patterns of co-occurrence of language for cognitive and social purposes in this study point to the important role of social language in keeping the lines of communication open, enhancing interaction, and facilitating negotiation and integration of content in the collaborative learning process. |
