Topic Management In Text-Based Wechat Interaction By Chinese Efl Learners From The Persperctive Of Interactionalcompetence

The study of interactional competence(IC)has long been the focus of L2 pragmatics.IC plays a significant role in successful communication(Kramsch,1986).At the same time,computer-mediated communication(CMC)has been an emerging field in recent years,which is different from traditional face-to-face interaction and remains underexplored.Therefore,developmental research on IC in CMC is currently receiving increasing amount of attention in the field of L2 pragmatics.However,the present studies on IC in CMC are mostly cross-sectional.In this case,more longitudinal studies are needed,especially in text-chat CMC,which poses a great challenge for interlocutors,since it provides no auditory or visual clues.Drawing upon the perspective of Interactional Competence,the present study investigates the resources and developmental trajectory in text-based online interaction with a special focus on participants’ topic management in multi-party discussion during collaborative writing tasks.Specifically,the research is conducted to answer the following questions:(1)What strategies are used by Chinese EFL learners in text-based We Chat interaction to initiate topics,and how do these strategies change over time?(2)What strategies are used by Chinese EFL learners in text-based We Chat interaction to develop topics,and how do these strategies change over time?(3)What strategies are used by Chinese EFL learners in text-based We Chat interaction to end topics,and how do these strategies change over time? Data were collected from multi-party text-based We Chat discussions by Chinese English major students of a foreign language university during the process of completing collaborative writing tasks over three months.Using the analytical framework of conversation analysis(CA),this study aims to identify the interactional resources employed by Chinese EFL learners in the three phases of topic management,namely,topic initiation,topic development and topic closure,as well as their developmental patterns.The study finds that the interactional resources used by Chinese EFL learners for topic management in text-chat CMC interaction basically corresponded to those in face-to-face interaction.In topic initiation,the students directly opened the topic at the initial stage,and over time,they developed prefacing strategies,such as questions about the plan for task discussion,greetings before the main task.In topic development,the students tended to put forward their opinions with “I think”,without relating to the view of previous speaker,but over time they adopted less direct expressions,such as “I suppose” and “shall we”,and related their opinions to previous speaker’s idea.In topic closing,the students directly ended the conversation when they finished the task discussion in their earlier discussions,but in later task discussions,they designed the pre-closing sequence with the summary or evaluation of the task discussion and the terminal exchange where participants again confirmed the end of the task or bid farewell to each other.In some cases,a post-closing extension occurred after the terminal exchange,where the students expressed their appreciation to the other participants or their expectation for the communication in the future.Meanwhile,the students’ topic management in text-chats distinguishes itself from that in face-to-face interaction in terms of its use of paralinguistic resources.Specifically,the students deployed emojis and punctuation marks to compensate for the lack of auditory and visual clues.This use of interactional resources becomes more extensive over time.Besides,over time,the students also used more alignment strategies.These findings contribute to a more comprehensive view on IC in text-chat CMC interaction.The present study also makes a first attempt to examine the interactional pattern of Chinese EFL learners’ multi-party text-chat during the coll aborative writing process.