Synchronous CMC and Second Language Acquisitionxuyi/Files/SCMCLiteratureReview-YiXu.doc · Web viewThrough classroom research, we should hypothesize and test whether the same generalizations

Synchronous Computer-mediated Communication 1

Synchronous Computer-mediated Communication and Second Language Acquisition

--Current Researches and Future Directions

Yi Xu


Synchronous Computer-mediated Communication and Second Language Acquisition

--Current Researches and Future Directions1

1. Introduction

Computer-mediated communication (hereafter CMC) is a powerful tool changing the

ways we live, work, and learn. As Shetzer & Warschauer (2000) point out, it allows us to

communicate with people all around the world simultaneously at little cost. It is also

bringing about renovations in second language (L2) learning and teaching. CMC

activities can be asynchronous, i.e. in the form of writing emails, or posting responses to

a discussion board online, or can be virtual synchronous conversations held in chatrooms,

Internet Relay Chat, etc. This paper will review researches on the use of synchronous

CMC (hereafter SCMC) in L2 classrooms.

While there are numerous studies on the effect and affect of SCMC activities in SLA,

most of those works examine the topic from pedagogical or sociolinguistic approaches. I

propose that future studies should focus on examining the learners’ actual acquisition of

grammatical competence through SCMC. Needless to say, previous researches, though

focusing on different perspectives, nevertheless offer findings valuable to the current

proposal.

2. Research Findings with a Pedagogical Approach

Ample researches have proved that CMC activities can be beneficial classroom

1 This paper was written in Fall 2005 in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the qualifying exam for the SLAT program. It is largely a critical literature review with a small section on proposals for future studies. The paper was later revised for consideration of publication for Computer-assisted Foreign Language Education, a peer-reviewed journal in CALL in China. (The revised paper integrates studies in China and was written in Chinese.)


experiences (Salaberry, 1997; Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000). Major advantages of using

CMC in the L2 classroom include the learners’ increased access to experts’ ideas,

increased motivation, a non- threatening environment, etc. (Salaberry, 1997). Those areas

have been extensively researched.

2.1 Production and Participation

SCMC, in contrast with asynchronous CMC, “refers to real-time interaction—usually

written communication—between people over either a local or a wide area network”

(Smith, 2004, p.370). Many studies that compare the students’ production in SCMC

activities and in face-to-face discussions find that SCMC mode often prompt the students

to produce more (Kern, 1995; Sullivan & Pratt, 1996; Warschauer, 1996; Abrams, 2003).

For instance, Kern (1995) finds that the students produced two to four times more

sentences during SCMC sessions than they did T-units2 during oral discussions. Students

also had about twice as many turns, and produced twice as many words in the SCMC

than in the oral discussions.

Electronic mode of discussion is also found to stimulate more equal participation.

Warschauer (1996) finds that students who were less fluent or comfortable in using their

L2 orally were likely to increase their participation more in the electronic mode. Sullivan

and Pratt (1996)’s study offer similar findings. Beauvois and Eledge (1996) further prove

that students, despite their personality types, all perceived SCMC sessions favorably.

2.2. Low Affective Filter, Motivation, and Concerns

2 T(erminable)-unit is an independent clause with its accompanying modifiers. Kern (1995) explains that because “sentence” is a problematic notion in oral discourse, T-units are a better gauge to segment oral discourse and units are “roughly analogous to sentences in written discourse” (Kern, 1995, p.463).


SCMC provides a non-threatening environment and therefore lowers the affective filter

for learning (Beauvois & Eledge, 1996; Kötter, 2001; Liu & Sadler, 2003; Coniam &

Wong, 2004), so that “the personal interest and relevance factor can engage the students

in using the language in ways that are meaningful to them” (Coniam & Wong, 2004,

p.324).3 Students’ attitudes towards SCMC are almost unanimously positive. In Kern’s

(1995) questionnaire data, students reported the benefit of the urgency to write, and the

encouragement of rhetorical thinking in the network-based discussion. Many learners

consider SCMC activities interesting, comfortable, and creative (Warschauer, 1996; Liu

& Sadler, 2003; Smith, Alvarez-Torres & Zhao, 2003; Coniam & Wong, 2004, among

others), and report that they have benefited from such activities linguistically, affectively,

and interpersonally (Beauvois & Eledge, 1996). Teachers’ responses of using SCMC in

the classroom are also mostly positive, though with some complaints that some students

would chat away from topics (Kern, 1995; Salaberry, 2000). This problem is indeed

found in Liu and Sadler’s (2003) study on electronic mode of peer review activities.

During the multi-user domains object-oriented (MOO, an online chatroom) session,

conversation maintenance turns (e.g. “Hey, what’s up”, “who r u talking to?”) took up as

much as 70% of the students’ interaction, making the session much less effective than

face-to-face interactions.

2.3. Power Relationship and Opportunity for Sociolinguistic Practice

SCMC activities also affect student/teacher dynamics. In Kern’s (1995) study, teachers

3 For the concept of “affective filter”, see Dulay, H. and Burt, M. (1977) and Krashen (1982). According to Krashen, affective variables include motivation, self-confidence, and anxiety. Researches find the CMC environment to be motivating and less anxiety-provoking.


took far fewer turns in the SCMC sessions than in oral discussions, and they only showed

their agreement/disagreement instead of giving summative evaluations of the students’

input. On the other hand, in SCMC sessions, the students themselves took the teachers’

role as conversation “gatekeepers”: they evaluated each other’s language and the content

of contribution. The students were found to produce 85% and 88% of the total number of

sentences, while in oral discussion they only produced 37% and 60%. Sullivan and Pratt

(1996), Ewing (2000), Salaberry (2000) also claim more student control in SCMC

activities than in classroom/interview oral tasks.

In Kern’s (1995) study, the students’ language in InterChange (i.e., the SCMC

software used) showed more discourse functions, including more greetings, assertions,

and questions. Similar to this finding, Ewing (2000) reports that while engaging in

SCMC activities, the students had opportunity to use clause types (e.g., indirective,

imperative, and interrogative structures) that were likely to be used by instructors in

traditional classroom settings. Sotillo (2005) believes that as students took risks

requesting favors/information, complimenting each other, apologizing, or negotiating

misunderstandings in SCMC, they acquired sociolinguistic competence.

3. Using SCMC to Improve Communicative Competence4

Researches mentioned above enlighten us in the usages of SCMC as a new platform for

L2 acquisition (SLA) because of its several advantages. But as Salaberry (2000) point

4 According to Canale & Swain (1980) and Canale (1983)’s revised model, communicative competence consists of four aspects of competence, namely grammatical competence, sociolinguistic competence, strategic competence and discourse competence. The concept of “communicative competence” was first proposed by Dell Hymes in 1971. For a detailed discussion of the evolvement of the communicative competence models, readers are referred to Johnson (2001).


out, those studies mainly focus on conversation patterns, sociolinguistic and pragmatic

competence in SCMC activities. After all, those are only “factors brought about by CMC

that may contribute indirectly to L2 development” (Salaberry, 2000, p.6). When Kötter

(2001) studies the effect of learner tandems in SCMC activities for English and German

acquisition, he writes, “it also seems reasonable to speculate that participants have

improved both their written and their spoken skills […] as a result of the synchronous

nature of their interactions” (p.303). However, like Pellettieri (2000) suggests, such an

assumption, though interesting, remains yet to be fully explored. Consider sociolinguistic

competence for instance. Data elicited by the above-mentioned projects reflect that the

students “are actually doing very different things with language” in SCMC activities than

in their traditional L2 classrooms (Ewing, 2000, p.343). CMC has its turn-taking and

topic shifting rules, which “differ greatly from those of other oral or written media

(Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000, p.173); relationship is also often redefined in SCMC

because of the relative anonymity of online communication (Shetzer & Warschauer,

2000; Smith, Alvarez-Torres, & Zhao, 2003). Importantly, L2 learners, as well as native

speakers, adhere to “online language” norms when they are engaging in CMC activities.

At the same time, the purpose of a L2 classroom is to help the students achieve L2

competence in reality, not their competence in the virtual space. Given the differences

between the computer and the oral and written media, teachers and researchers should

caution in equaling the students’ sociolinguistic performance in SCMC to their

sociolinguistic competence in real life. Readers will notice that those previously


mentioned studies do not usually attempt to mark such a difference or establish a

connection between the two.

When it comes to another aspect of communicative competence, grammatical

competence, research is probably even more meager. Salaberry (2000) says five years

ago, “Few studies […] have directly addressed the effect of CMC environment on the

sequence and rate of development of grammatical features of the target language such as

morphology or syntax” (Salaberry, 2000, p.6). To my knowledge, this is a crucial area in

which the relationship between CMC and SLA still remains largely unexplored.

3.1. Linguistic Features of CMC Language

Can the learners’ improved linguistic skills (provided that there are any) in CMC transfer

to their oral or written performance? To answer this question, one again first needs to

understand SCMC as different from other modalities (oral and written) in audience,

medium of interaction, temporality, yet at the same time shares certain characteristics

with them. Baron (1998) points out that electronic dialogues more closely resemble

writing in type/token ratio and sentential/syntactic features, but more approximate

speeches in exhibiting a personal and less informative style. Smith (2004) also notes that

CMC resembles written text in lexical density, and is closer to face-to-face

communication in increased use of abbreviations, simple syntax (such as subject or

modal deletion), the acceptance of surface errors (e.g., typographical and spelling), and

the use of formulaic phrase. In sum, CMC is believed to be situated somewhere in

between the continuum from the spontaneous, oral language extreme to the formal


written form extreme (Baron, 1998; Smith, 2000; Abrams, 2003). Such unique features

lead to interesting implications of using CMC as a learning platform.5

3.2. Features of the Learner Language in SCMC

As L2 researchers, we are interested in whether the students’ learner language also

displays unique features in their SCMC activities because of the medium. Research

findings, however, are controversial. Kern (1995) finds that though his subjects produced

a greater number and variety of verb forms and clause types in the InterChange session

than in the oral session, languages in the InterChange session suffered simplicity

(p.468).6 Kern (1995) also finds that the students’ SCMC language has less grammatical

accuracy, and less cohesion and coherence strategies. “Orthographic accents are often

missing, verb conjugations are simplified” (p. 459). He concludes, “Formal accuracy […]

and discourse conventions are not goals well served by InterChange” (p.470). These

findings are generally consistent from observations of the CMC language on the whole.

However, Warschauer’s (1996) study contradicts Kern’s (1995). Warschauer used a

type-token ratio and a coordinate index7 to determine the linguistic complexity of the

students’ language. Both his quantitative and qualitative analysis prove that the students’

language in the computer mode, compared to their oral production, was more complex,

esp. in terms of a high percentage of subordination.

5 It should be noted that language in asynchronous CMC is probably not identical to language in SCMC. As Abrams (2003)’s study suggests, ACMC and SCMC in L2 classrooms may as well conduce very different linguistic consequences. However, not many researches specifically address the differences between the two. 6 Kern explains that simple messages tended to elicit more responses and were therefore preferred in SCMC.7 Type-token ratio is defined by the total number of different words divided by the total number of words. Coordination index is the number of independent clause coordinations divided by the total number of combined clauses (independent coordination plus dependent subordination). Coordination index is inversely proportional to complexity.


Salaberry’s (2000) study compares four Spanish learners’ performance of past tense

verbs with imperfective and preterite aspects. The four students were found to make the

fewest errors in a written close test task in XXX?, and they made the most mistakes with

the past tense in the oral interview session. Their grammatical accuracy in the SCMC

activities was neither the best nor the worst. Salaberry’s (2000) data therefore supports

that learner’s performance is improved in more formal, conscious-raised contexts, and

that learner language is morphosyntactically more complex and accurate in the CMC than

in oral settings.

3.3. Negotiations and Scaffolding in SCMC

Many have suggested that CMC as a very beneficial medium for L2 development

(Salaberry, 1997). A few studies have offered rationales based on the unique features of

the medium. First of all, because SCMC reduces immediacy compared to face-to-face

communication, the students have more time to process an input, and to ponder the

appropriate contribution they should give (Abrams, 2003). Apart from that, they can often

rely on a buffer zone (i.e., the editing window that they can view the exact words of other

people’s input, and can reflect on and revise the language form to express their ideas).

Salaberry (2000) considers it “an additional source of working memory” (p.9). Because

the students can benefit cognitively from this process, CMC can be considered an

“intellectual amplifier (Shetzer & Warschauer, 2000, p.173).

Salaberry (2000) gives several reasons why CMC interaction is especially beneficial

for L2 learning. First of all, CMC naturally connects the “focus on meaning with a focus


on form” (p.6). Students are more likely to pay attention to create meanings in oral

discussion, and to focus on form in written tasks. The fact that CMC shares

characteristics of both settings makes it possible to achieve an optimal balance between

the two emphases. Secondly, interactions in CMC are often “goal-oriented”, and evidence

supports that goal-oriented communication is more likely to generate a deep level of

cognitive processing and therefore facilitate L2 development (Salaberry, 2000, p.7).

Because of those features of the SCMC, students’ production in SCMC can be their

preliminary step towards their face-to-face interaction (Abrams, 2003).

A few studies have examined the exact negotiation and scaffolding experiences of

students in SCMC activities. Scaffolding can be loosely defined as “the conditions

created by a knowledgeable person that may help the less experienced participant extend

and improve his/her knowledge of the language system” (Salaberry, 2000, p.19). In

Kötter (2001), English native speakers learning German and German native speakers

studying English collaborate and helped each other in their L2 through a world-wide

chatroom program. The twenty-nine students worked in partnerships and benefited from

the partner’s expert knowledge of the target language (Kötter, 2001, p.289). Kötter’s

(2001) regret is that the learners gave less than half corrective feedbacks as they were

expected to do, and almost half of the chat logs contained no or only one correction. Such

a result confirms that the students were adhering to the online “norms” when they were

engaging in the activity. As I have previously suggested, SCMC language by its nature

does not need to be always grammatically accurate. Despite the pedagogical purpose of


the activity, few students stopped to comment and evaluate their partners’ language at the

price of the conversation flow. Kötter (2001) also suggests that sometimes the students

were uncertain about the appropriate ways to correct their partners, fearing that they

might appear “arrogant” (p.300).

The fact that students are in control of the conversation in SCMC also induces some

problems, because it is likely that the input learners get would be “defective” (Kern,

1995, p.470). This is even true when native speaker partners are present. Sotillo (2005)

finds that sometimes SCMC activities could introduce more errors. The following is a

chat log from her study. <NNS> refers to a non-native speaker while <ANNS> is an

American native speaker.

70R<NNS>: sure I’m realy <spelling> sorry71K<ANNS>: stop saying sorry…74K<ANNS>: In unite state people don’t say sorry all the time like in Brazil.

Notice that the native speaker omits the article “the” before “unite state [sic]”.8 Later on,

after the native speaker omits the definite article for the second time, the non-native

speaker quickly picks up the non-target like form.

129K<ANNS>: Yes, I know. But here in US I have never heard about it. […]130K<ANNS>: I ‘m going to type some sentences and we can go over them.131R<NNS>: ok132R<NNS>: I have never been in <syntax-missing article ‘the’> united states.

One suspects that the accuracy of the input might be even more problematic when all the

participants in the SCMC are non-native speakers. Luckily, Pellettieri (2000) addresses

8 There could be two interpretations. It is possible that the native speaker’s grammatical knowledge is incomplete, or he/she assumes that it is acceptable to have omissions in the computer medium.


this concern, and proves that the learners’ negotiation and scaffolding can be largely

effective.

Pellettieri (2000) attempts to test whether SCMC activities can foster the “negotiation

of meaning” just as oral interactions (p.60). In oral interactions, input is made

comprehensible to L2 learners through linguistically modified language (i.e., with

grammatical simplifications and repetition), and interactionally modified language (via

comprehension checks, clarification request, recasts, etc.) Comprehensible input in turn is

essential for the development of grammatical competence, in that it could trigger the

learners’ internal, perhaps innate, processes of language acquisition (Krashen, 1982)9.

Equally important is the learners’ output, so that learners can push their L2 abilities to

their linguistic limits and develop in their zone of proximal development (Vygotsky,

1978). When it comes to output, two types of output are considered beneficial to the

learner language development. One is form-focused negotiation work, and the other

being corrective (explicit and implicit) feedback (Pellettieri, 2000).

Pellettieri (2000) notes that in her study of the Spanish learners’ SCMC learning

activities, both interactionally modified input and corrective feedback were present. She

further notes that SCMC interactions followed the same negotiation routines as in oral

interaction. The routines include triggers (i.e., non-target form learner output that spur

the negotiation routine, signals (i.e. indicators of communicative troubles), responses,

which respond to signals, and reactions to the responses. The learners’ chat logs

contained 31 corrective feedbacks, with equal distribution of explicit and implicit ones.

The feedbacks were also on all grammatical levels (i.e., lexical, morphosyntactic, and

9 See Krashen (1982) for his Input Hypothesis (i+1) and Monitor Model.


semantics), though mostly on the lexical level. The students incorporated 70% -75% (or

13 instances) of the target-like feedback in their following conversations when possible.

Pellettieri (2000) also finds that for six times, non-target like forms were offered as

models in feedbacks, but the students only incorporated two non-target forms in the

subsequent conversation. The research confirms that even when no “expert” is present, a

student-controlled scaffolding experience in the SCMC context can be highly beneficial.

3.3. Acquisition of Grammatical Competence

3.3.1. Lexicon

It is said that a direct, measurable link between negotiated interaction with L2

development is difficult to establish (Smith, 2004). Particularly, very few studies have

attempted to establish such an explicit link in a synchronous computer-mediated context.

Smith (2004) conducted a well-designed research on 24 intermediate-level ESL students’

acquisition of lexical items through SCMC activities. After unknown words were sorted

out, the researcher paired up the students and identified target lexical items for each

student.10 The students communicated through ChatNet (the SCMC program used) to

conduct picture-ordering and decision-making tasks. Three types of interactional

modification strategies were identified. For one, the learners could negotiate, i.e., respond

when a nonunderstanding (triggers) occurs; learners could also opt for preemptive input

if they assumed that their partner does not know the word (e.g., “I have a bouquet that is

a lot of flower in the basket”). The last strategy made use of was ignore, defined as no

10 Smith’s (2004) paired up the students in this way: in a pair consisting of student A and B, the target lexical items for were known to student B, and the target item for B were known to A.


explicit address of the item in a meaningful way.

The students then took immediate and delayed productive and receptive posttest after

the SCMC tasks. The result shows that for all negotiated target lexical items, the learners

had a 94% (immediate posttest) to 95% (delayed posttest) gain in the receptive posttest,

and a 81% to 84% gain for lexical items that were introduced via preempt input. Though

less gain was observed in productive posttest (35% to 76%), Smith’s (2004) experiment

shows that the learners’ improvement in lexical knowledge through SCMC interaction,

especially through the tactic of negotiation, is effective.

3.3.2. Morphosyntax

Salaberry (2000) was the first project that studies the effect of text-based SCMC on the

development of L2 morphosyntactic features. The project design was mentioned in

Section 3.2. Because the learners used more accurate past-tense forms in the SCMC

session than in the oral interview, the researcher concludes that “the first signs of change

in past-tense morphological marking were more evident in the CMC setting than the face-

to-face session” (p. 19).

Salaberry (2000) was a pioneering pilot study in the field. However, apart from the

small sample size (only four students), there are some shortages in the implication of the

study. First of all, the morphosyntactic complex form in the computer media is simply a

reflection of the development. Crucially, one cannot equal a reflection of the more formal

register to the development through the computer medium. Considering that the subjects

performed most well in written tasks, the experiment only demonstrates that the students


paid more attention to form when given adequate amount of time (such as in a CMC

context than in an oral interview). Secondly, Salaberry believes that the SCMC

interaction is scaffolding, yet the study lacks a qualitative analysis of the students’

interaction. Also very importantly, Salaberry does not compare “scaffolding” in the CMC

medium to that in the oral or written context. Given that CMC sessions are more time-

consuming than the oral tasks and offers less salient opportunity for the learners to pay

attention to form when compared to the written tasks, it is uncertain whether CMC is

always the most effective medium to conduct negotiation tasks.

3.3.3. Syntax/Writing

Coniam and Wong (2004)’s study differs from the previous two in that the students were

engaging in SCMC activities outside the classroom, and that the area of the research

interest was more “global”: the finiteness of sentence (i.e. the use of one finite verb in a

main clause).11 26 EFL students in Hong Kong were asked to use ICQ (an Internet Relay

Chat program) to chat for at least 5 hours per week for a month long period, with a visual

sign placed beside their monitors reminding them of the “finiteness” rule. To ensure that

the learners should be able to communicate English (L2) in a relaxed environment, the

researchers did not control the learners’ chat partners, topics, and did not record the chat

logs. The researchers compared the number of t-units in the control and the experimental

groups’ pre-study and post-study writing assignments. Surprisingly, the experimental

group did not improve either in production quantity nor in accuracy in the post-test.

11 Because of the typological differences between English and Cantonese (the subjects’ first language, L1), the morphological marking of tense in English is often problematic for the subjects. “Finiteness” is identified as a common error across subjects prior to the study.


However, qualitative changes were found in the experimental group (but not the control

group) students’ writing: the students were more “ready to convey more complex ideas

by conjoining clauses or by embedding”. The experimental group’s errors often involved

the use of a wrong morphological form in subordinate clauses or non-initial coordinate

clauses.12 Coniam and Wong also find that the subjects used more auxiliaries in t-units in

posttest. At the same time, the subjects’ errors did decrease in simple sentences with one

finite verb. This study raises interesting questions such as the SCMC settings (in or out of

classroom) and research methodologies (quantitative or qualitative). At the same time,

Coniam and Wong’s project also suffers some shortages such as the short period of

experiment, the limited amount of data, and the somewhat controversial result.

3.3.4. Oral Production

Abrams (2003) explored whether linguistic features observed in students CMC sessions

would transfer to their oral performance. This study compared three groups’ performance

in oral discussion in German (L2). The control group did regular classroom activity

before the oral discussion, while treatment group A used WebCT’s (a network-based

program) chat tool the day before the discussion, and treatment group B used WebCT’s

bulletin board to post their opinions on the topic for a week before the oral discussion

class. In this study, the SCMC group had significantly more output (in terms of more

words and more c-units)13 in the oral discussion than the other two groups. But there was

12 Coniam and Wong give several examples of the subjects’ errors in those more complex sentences. For instance, “I asked for the reason why they fight with each other and record down their name”, whereas the underlined words signal learner errors. 13 C-units are “isolated phrases not [necessarily] accompanied by a verb, but they have a communicative value”. See Abrams, p.161


no significant difference between groups in lexical richness, density or syntactic

complexity.14 Abrams (2003) argues that the increased amount of output was beneficial

enough, because it was a reflection that the students can “access the necessary lexical

items with greater facility and speed” (p.164).

Importantly, Abrams (2003) points out that though the ACMC group used more

subordinate, relative, and infinitive clauses during the CMC session, this usage did not

transfer to their oral exchanges. “Their use of these features may merely reflect the

different perception of ACMC as requiring a higher register (such as formal writing) with

more complex sentence structures” (Abrams, 2003, p.163). This suggestion confirms the

intuition that the morphosyntactic complex forms found in Salaberry’s (2000) study were

also simply due to register reasons.

Abrams’ (2003) study is one of the few that explicitly addresses the issue of

“transferability” of the students’ performance in the computer media to their oral

performance. One regret of this study is that there does not seem to be a reasonable level

of guarantee that the three groups were doing comparable tasks in the oral, SCMC, and

ACMC settings. .

4. Future Research

Considering the current gap in literature in the substantially relating SCMC to the

acquisition of grammatical competence, I contend that we should adopt a more formal

linguistic approach to study the relationship of the two.

14 Syntactic complexity is calculated by “dividing the number of independent clauses ‘by the total number of combined clauses (independent coordination plus dependent subordination’”. See Warschauer (1996, p.14) and Abrams, p.162.


First of all, researchers should consult theories regarding the similarities and

differences between languages in the computer medium and in the oral and written

context. Through classroom research, we should hypothesize and test whether the same

generalizations hold true for SCMC language for SLA purposes.

Learning from the example of Salaberry (2000), Coniam and Wong (2004), and

Smith (2004), I believe a well-controlled experiment should identify one or only a few

specific grammatical features of the L2, and compare the learners’ acquisition of the

feature(s) through SCMC, through oral interaction, and through written communication.

For instance, researchers could select L2 features that do not exist in the learners’ L1,

such as morphological inflections, tense and aspect markings, relativization of the

indirect object, particles, and test the learners’ learning pace of those features through

SCMC activities.

Such an experiment should attempt to answer the following questions:

1. Is the learners’ way of negotiation or scaffolding identical or different in the

computer medium and in the oral and written media? While previous studies

such as Pellettieri (2000), Salaberry (2000) and Abrams (2003) have given us

directions, a combination of the qualitative and quantitative method to

approach the question may offer more interesting findings. For instance,

many researches have pointed out that students are more willing to participate

due to the lack of face-threatening environment, would the students be more

willing to offer corrective feedbacks in the computer medium than in face-to-


face communication? Or are the students less likely to consider their peers’

evaluations and comments seriously due to the chat-like characteristics of

SCMC?

2. The learner language in the written form is likely to be the most

morphologically accurate and syntactically complex one. But is the SCMC

language more morphologically and syntactically complex than the students’

oral production like Warschauer (1996) and Salaberry (2000) suggested, or is

it simpler, and less accurate than oral output like Kern (1995) have found?

Apart from resolving the controversy, one should also answer why the SCMC

language would be more complex or simpler than oral output. Factors could

include more processing time, self-repair, learners’ motivation and

willingness to take risks, and discussion topics, etc.

3. Most crucially, this research should address whether the students’

performance in the SCMC setting would transfer to their written or oral

performance, and to what extent.

4. Equally important is whether scaffolding through oral or written interaction

would be less or more efficient in facilitating the learners’ acquisition of the

grammatical feature. As Abrams (2003), Coniam and Wong (2003), and

Smith (2004) prove, communicating in the target language synchronously

through the network is likely to be beneficial, but would SCMC be the most

cost-efficient platform to facilitate SLA?


A few other issues include the settings, frequency of SCMC activities in the

classroom, teacher control, and technologies. Because the purpose of the proposed study

is to investigate the effect of SCMC for formal L2 teaching, unlike Coniam and Wong’s

(2003) suggestion, I believe we should carry out the study in a classroom setting in which

the affective filter would resemble future practices. Related to the issue is the teacher’s

role. Several studies have found that the students are replacing the teachers’ roles as

evaluators, designators and controllers in the SCMC setting. Researchers should test out

the optimal power distribution between teacher and the students in SCMC activities. Last,

but not least is the issue of the technology. Previous projects have used very different

SCMC programs including InterChange, Yahoo! Messenger, ChatNet, Ytalk WebCT,

MOO, Aspect, and Palace. It is argued (and proved) that those programs could lead to

dissimilar students’ performances and motivations (Smith, Alvarez-Torres & Zhao, 2003;

Smith, 2004; Smith & Gorsuch, 2004). Particularly, some of these programs, such as

Ytalk on the Unix system with NCSA Telnet program, can capture the learners’ actions of

backspacing, deletion and editing. In this way, the chat log transcript would reveal the

learners’ self-monitoring; self-repair within the same turn (Pellettieri, 2000). Smith and

Gorsuch (2004) also argue that it could be most beneficial for research purposes to

capture the students’ SCMC activities by audio-visual equipment. Apparently, selecting

the right program would also be a strategic decision for the teachers and researchers.

5. Conclusion

Despite the few pioneering studies attempting to establish a direct, measurable relation


between SCMC and grammatical competence acquisition, the current findings are

somewhat inconclusive or even controversial. I have proposed ways to follow those

examples and conduct a more thorough research in this area. Previous projects with

findings of the students’ motivation, level of participation and teacher-student

relationship are of relevance for this research purpose too. Optimally, the study could be

longitudinal, and could reveal the learners’ actual process of acquiring selected

grammatical features through SCMC activities.


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Synchronous CMC and Second Language Acquisitionxuyi/Files/SCMCLiteratureReview-YiXu.doc · Web viewThrough classroom research, we should hypothesize and test whether the same generalizations