Here we take a first look at the language in the dialogues which can be created using the tools in a Virtual Learning Environment- chat, forum, email, interactive writing tools.
One of the English teacher’s challenges is to create varied and interesting spoken activities for all students, and there are many communicative tools for creating meaningful talk and filling classrooms with voices. But the restrictions are obvious – the talk is transitory, some students may say little or nothing, and many variables decide who is present and talking, who hears what they say, and how turn-taking is regulated.
Online discussions involve students, make the content available to all over a period of time, have contributions read by everyone, and typically create a lot of enthusiastic dialogue. They are therefore a valuable supplement to spoken activities in the classroom. A key factor seems to be that the whole discussion is visible and read more than once by participants before they write a new posting.
All these dialogues are written, but a lot of the language which is written online is much closer to the norms of the spoken language than it is to the norms of the written language. It is also interesting to read student responses in for example, chat sessions and forums where they write things like “ I liked what you said about…” where they are clearly thinking speaking, though they are in fact having a written discussion.
The twofold purpose of the on-screen talk
The language which occurs in the “room filled with voices” serves a twofold purpose. It is there partly to provide the learners with meaningful practice in discussion between learners and between learners and teachers and also to provide important practice in the use of the written language and in the production of text by using chat, email and forum discussions and interactive writing tools.
It is also used as the language for organising and administration and is therefore a medium of communication between learners and and between learners and teachers.
A lot of the written language which occurs in online communication within a VLE has many of the informal features of the spoken language, but it also has the drawback that the visual signals of face to face communication are missing. This in turn means that one has to be extremely sensitive to how the receiver of the communication may react to or even totally misunderstand the message.
A scale from informal to formal language
Informality or attempts to mirror the spoken language is most obvious in the encoded informality of sms messages or emails which use many spoken language forms and where rules of grammar and capitalisation are often ignored.
These informal aspects occur when we are using the technology to communicate fast. At the other end of this scale of informality – formality are the pieces of “polished” written work which may go into a student portfolio for evaluation.
SMS
cu at 2nite,
h& k p
CHAT
Tom, why are you looking so pessimistic about this issue??? The more you know the more it hurts... in my opinion the more you know the better...You don’t tell “secrets” that friends have told you to others, NO MATTER WHAT
FORUM DISCUSSIONS
I thought it was very interesting that you brougt this up Veronica, because I must admit that I got so caught up in the story, that thinking of its possibilities in class never crossed my mind.
“PUBLISHED” TEXT ASSIGNMENTS
During a lifetime we meet hundreds, if not thousands of people that will have some effect on us. We might see some of these people only on the street for a second or two, while others become true friends. Still, there are some people in our lives that have been a big part of us forever, and most people are lucky to have them in their lives for a very long time.
Questions of Genre and Appropriacy
We have so far discussed text genres in terms of degrees of formality and informality. We also need to be aware of appropriacy within this same scale. Native speakers of a language will more easily and automatically adjust language to suit degrees of formality, but non-native speakers need not only to learn new vocabulary, but also be given guidance on the appropriate use of new words. We had an example of a lower secondary pupil who innocently wrote to his class contact in Australia, “When I woke up this morning, I felt like shit”. This caused an angry response from the class teacher in Australia and nearly torpedoed a whole emailing project.
We also need to be sensitive to others’ reactions to our use of language, especially in giving response, for example in a forum discussion or email exchange. The lack of the visual signals which are a natural part of a face to face exchange makes this particularly important, since comments which are intended to be brief may be interpreted as brusque or hurtful. For example in a face to face discussion we might say something like “Yes, but what about……?” In a written response situation this may need to be wrapped up in the form of “ This is a very good idea, but have you also considered….”
See Lund 217
For more about language, see Language in forums
