The word chat suggests informality, spontaneity, casual use of language, overlapping or interrupting. Most of these features can be transferred to online chat. But this does not imply that chat cannot be used for “real” discussion.

Chat is synchronous online discussion to which all members of a defined community (for example a class “room” ) have access. They can address postings to the whole community (plenary access) or to one person (one-to-one). In some VLEs chat can be set up in smaller groups within the main group, in others not.

As we have no examples of student chat from our own working experience, we quote from a class discussion at Higher Secondary level (Norwegian videregående) described and discussed by Andreas Lund in his doctoral thesis The Teacher as Interface. Teachers of EFL in ICT-rich Environments: Beliefs, Practices, Appropriation, Oslo, 2004.

The online discussion, in a group of 16-17 year old students, is linked to a class discussion and a written assignment, and is both situated within a teaching programme and put within a clear and necessarily limited time framework. The teaching topic is Relationships, and Lund emphasises the process in which the teacher “seeks to engage learners in interaction, in eliciting not just words but articulated thought and reasoning”,in a process where he “through orchestrating affordances and constraints tries to build a discourse community...and balances between the school setting... on the one hand and the learners’ lifeworlds on the other” (209)

In advance, the teacher posts a “Message” about friendship which ends “How do we behave and treat each other to make a relationship last?”

In class, the activity is set up. “Learners are told to write at least two or three entries each, and to avoid bringing up embarrassing incidents from which people can be identified (this is observed by all). Learners are also told that they can choose whether they want to address others in the plenary mode or one-to-one” (Lund, 214).

The quoted postings in the discussion show that the students slip easily into the conventions of online genres.  A girl who has not joined in the face-to-face discussion, writes a comment addressing the teacher:

yeah is all about respect. u must respect eachother and be honest, so u can trust eachother. a realationship can’t work when is doubt in the picture. u need to sit down and take a serious talk when u have something on ur mind

Another normally reticent student, addressing other students, sticks to his habitual ironic style:

If you want to know how to make a relationship last, just read the entries on this

page.*LoL*

Both these postings are influenced by “Netlish” and SMS – rapid writing, with full stops as the only punctuation, no capital letters, “u” for “you”, and the text message acronym*LoL* for Laugh out Loud.

Other students, and the teacher, followed “normal” writing conventions:

…And this is where the tricky part comes in: In order to make a relationship last, you have to try to pull through the rough times, aswell as the good times. This is how to make it work if you have been dating/together for a longer period…..

On the use of online discussions, Lund comments:  “despite the introduction of the networked environment, this is not a strictly distributed activity but a hybrid; learners are communicating as if they were miles apart, and this “willing suspension of disbelief” seems to result in a substantial production of posting. The logs show that the ones who were reticent or off-task during the face-to-face plenary, seem to gain a voice online.” Lund 214-215

The account of this discussion activity shows that beside the online discussion being developed, the students are involved in another parallel discussion, spoken, in which they follow and comment on the online discussion, apparently mostly in Norwegian. This says something about the degree of involvement in the situation, and the most striking feature about Chat: that the whole discussion appears simultaneously on all screens,

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