| According to sociocultural theory (SCT), human consciousness is fundamentally social, and human's higher cognitive functions develop from the interaction with the social milieu and are mediated through language and other semiotic artifacts. The act of using language in communicative activities then is a key to learners'cognitive development, and language itself, when acting as a psychological tool mediating people's cognitive minds, extends its functions and development. Thus, English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learning and teaching is supposed to contribute to both language development and cognitive thinking abilities. Informed by SCT, there is a significantly enhanced awareness of the contextual and interactional dimensions of language use and increased emic sensitivity towards fundamental understanding of the interactive learning process (Firth and Wagner, 1997: 286). On one hand, many EFL teaching and research concerns have started to lay increasingly more on enhancing learners'communicative resources. On the other hand, the role languaging has in distributing cognition greatly widens EFL learning and teaching research agenda (Swain, 2008).Online dialogue, as one kind of the concrete, linguistically mediated social and intellectual activities, has become a popular learning resource in many computer-assisted language learning (CALL) situations. However, like most researches in domestic EFL field, very little attention in online dialogue research has been paid to the interaction between communicative activities and participants'psychological processes. And the universal lack of concern for cognitive aspects of language learning does not only lead to limitations in its research scope, but also as many EFL educators put forward, greatly influence the language learners'cognitive development.The principal aim of this study is mainly to investigate the psychological process emically during the online dialogic interaction in order to gain an in-depth understanding of how EFL learners successfully convey their meanings and communicate with other online interlocutors cognitively as well as linguistically. We realize our purpose by comparing two modes of online dialogues, starter-wrapper mode and disputational mode, with focal attention to three aspects: interaction patterns, the application of cognitive skills, as well as language production. The research context is a network-based extracurricular EFL learning program using QICQ (also QQ) software. The activity is conducted by eight students and a tutor in a university. The methodology used was mainly content analysis, complemented by teacher-participant's observation and short interviews. Data was collected by instruments of Interactivity Graph and Coding Schema for Cognitive Skills; data analysis was done by comparing data using quantitative and qualitative measures.In terms of interaction patterns, it has been found that in both modes of online dialogues the overall degree of engagement and interactivity are reasonably high and individual learners have different levels of contributions. In addition, the interaction in starter-wrapper mode can be labeled as"starter-centered", while the interaction in disputational mode can be labeled as"synergy". And there is more two-way interaction in disputational mode, and it is more continual and highly disputant.In terms of the application of cognitive skills, the study reports that both modes of online dialogues benefits the application of various cognitive skills, basic ones and complex high-leveled ones, and the most frequently used cognitive skills fall into three categories including proposing questions, clarification, and synthesis. Some cognitive skills (e.g. providing suggestions, proposing solutions etc.) were more commonly applied in starter-wrapper mode. Some cognitive skills (e.g. proposing rhetorical questions, disagreements etc.) were more commonly applied in disputational mode.In terms of language production, the results demonstrate that both modes of online dialogues have brought in rich language production. In addition to designed language production expectation, its stimulation value on voluntary off-task postings from students themselves is obvious, involving such aspects: integrative summary of the dialogue, linguistic mistakes found out in the dialogic learning, and beautiful and useful expressions picked up in the recorded messages.Also, other findings have emerged from this study according to teachers'observation and simple interviews, such as the promotion of electric literacy, student solidarity, and so on, and the traditional boundaries between the teacher and the student have been abolished.On the basis of these findings, some reasonable suggestions are put forward for EFL teaching. On the whole, on theoretical level, this study has provided an empirical case for the integration of SCT in computer-mediated communication (CMC) research, and contributed to the enrichment of research methods in domestic CMC research; on practical level this study has offered implication for how to make use of online dialogue to promote language learning in a more effective may.
|
PDF Full Text Request