Face-to-face Versus Synchronous Electronic Discussion As Prewriting Activity In The Foreign Language Writing Class

One of the main findings of computer-mediated communication study in recent years is that it has an equalizing effect among student participation in class. Face-to-face discussions tend to be relatively unbalanced, with the teacher or a few participants dominating the floor; however, computer-mediated communication features more balanced participation, with participants sharing the floor more equally. According to some studies, second and foreign language teachers have also claimed that electronic communication has been proved to be an equalizer in their classrooms.Besides, some researches find that the formality and complexity of language in electronic discussion might be an excellent medium for prewriting work since it could serve as a bridge from spoken interaction to written composition.This study aims to prove these claims through comparing the performances of student participation in the traditional face-to-face prewriting small group discussions and those in the synchronous computer-mediated communication mode. The findings show out a tendency toward more equal participation in computer-mediated communication mode especially when it is concerned to the introversive students. The study also discovers that the language students used in the electronic prewriting discussion and in the first draftscomposed after the discussion is more formal and complex lexically and syntactically than the language they used in face-to-face mode. However, the comparison of the first drafts which were finished separately after the two modes of discussion by individual student demonstrates that there is not obvious differences among the two categories of first drafts concerning the content of writing.