Pedagogy, Purpose, and the Second Language Learner in On-Line Communities

Abstract

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) are often portrayed as offering a collaborative community space in which native and non-native language speakers reciprocally scaffold linguistic, cultural and content knowledge, a space which assists students in overcoming well-documented challenges encountered in traditional classrooms (Leki, 2001; Morita, 2000, 2004). However, recent studies point to the communicative disjunctures arising from variances in cultural capital and socio-technological histories in on-line dialogic encounters between student groups (see Belz, 2003; Kramsch & Thorne, 2002; Thorne, 2003, 2000). This article examines online community formation among participants in a graduate seminar on modern language education and the pedagogical design that facilitated the development of norms of joint construction of knowledge, reciprocity, and sharing. Drawing upon survey and interview data as well as on a descriptive statistical analysis of the bulletin board interaction, the study explores how design provided non-native speakers with opportunities to capitalize on their existing experiential and intellectual capital.