CMC SUMMARY: muna

Introduction

The article was taken from CALICO Journal, 19 (2) by Mark Darhower entitled Interactional features of synchronous Computer- Mediated Communication in the intermediate L2 class: A sociocultural case study. This article was designed to study about the interactional features of synchronous CMC, chat. The study was specifically examined the features of intersubjectivity, off-task discussion, greetings and leave-takings, exploration of identity and role play, humor and sarcasm, and the use of L1 which is English. The study cited the sociocultural theoretical framework of Vygotsky and utilized discourse analysis in describing and explaining outstanding features of chat room communication.

Methodology

The study was conducted in the Spanish classes of two intact fourth-semester students (33) and class teacher. The learners were engaged in an interactive activities accompanied with specific communicative goals and the class was delivered using the integrated-skills language instruction which include listening, speaking, reading and writing. This study was designed using the qualitative method in which it involves observation, recording data, and it is based predominantly on no-numerical data. The participants of this study will be observed through the chat activities. Research question for this study is what are some outstanding interactional features in chat among learners and teacher?

Findings

From the study conducted through the nine-week period of study, it is found that intersubjectivity; off-task discussion; social cohesiveness; including greetings and leave-takings; the use of humor, and sarcasm/insults; role plays; and the use of L1 were the interactional features of interest emerged from the data collected. It is found that it was tough to establish intersubjectivity of communication in the chat room environment. This is because the nonverbal communication does not exist as the interlocutors did not see each other while chatting. Off-task discussion occurs when the learners choose to discard the topic given and choose their own. Social cohesiveness occurred when the chatters involved in extensive electronic discourse that require them to collaborate each other to establish and maintain consistent discussion. The use of learners’ L1 only occurred when they were to express unknown lexical item in Spanish. It is also used to explain the utterances that are not clear in Spanish.