To address the first question, an analysis of discourse functions used by participants during online interactions and the participants' responses to the semi-structured interview questions on what they perceived of their language use and how they negotiated with peers and the teacher when they were engaged in computer-mediated activities were employed. Through participating in the collaborative Blackboard® LMS forum activities, the students used various discourse functions. This way they learnt the surface features o f text using CMC in addition to face-to-face teaching. They did it in the social context o f their course and university, which is their academic discourse community. As discussed in Chapter 2, such a model in which learners acquire certain discipline specific skills in the social context of their discourse community is what Lea & Street (1998) call the academic literacies model. So through my research I viewed the meaning making process o f students' writing from the academic literacies perspective and found that students in the social context of their discourse community were acquiring skills specific to their academic writing course. Academic literacies were developed via Blackboard® LMS's discussion forums when students discussed and negotiated meaning making processes in the CMC technological medium. The EFL learners were part o f a discourse community comprised o f their peers and teachers, in which they learnt to some extent how to provide feedback. They appeared to be acquiring discipline specific rhetorical and linguistic conventions which Berkenkotter et al. (1991) consider to be an important aspect of academic literacy development (Chapter 2, Section 2.2.1).
The number of online communication activities and the extent o f students' participation varied across both the synchronous and asynchronous forums. We observe
that students participated more actively in the synchronous than the asynchronous one. The teachers reported that participation in the live sessions was compulsory as it counted towards the attendance requirements to be fulfilled by every student, while participation in the asynchronous was not mandatory. The teachers also felt that because through synchronous live discussion, students could post their immediate queries and get prompt replies, therefore, the students participated more actively in the synchronous sessions than the asynchronous sessions. Despite uneven participation, findings show that CMC tools played an important role in facilitating students to understand their w riting tasks. As such, CMC tools provided extended opportunities for collaboration to students and instructors in both the synchronous and asynchronous forums. As reported in the interpretive interview data in Chapter 4, CMC gave the students an opportunity to engage in positive rapport and build mutual confidence while engaged in online writing assignments. This finding conforms to the findings o f Johnson & Johnson (1987), who argued that in online collaborative learning settings, students learnt actively, negotiating and-discovering m o re-mean ing-^th rough reconeeptualization of-pr-ie^ Jmewledge and--- working in an environment that reduces anxiety and uncertainty (see Chapter 2, Section 2.3.1). Similarly, CMC was also perceived by students as having potential second language learning advantages (a cognitive benefit) in the areas o f comprehensible interaction and collaborative learning. Kitade (2000) and Vance et al. (1997) report similar findings in their studies. So we may infer that students perceived cognitive, psychological and collaborative benefits of the affordances o f CMC.
As for the differences/similarities between synchronous and asynchronous CMC modes in the use of discourse functions discussed in Chapter 4 (4.2.3), although the types o f the discourse functions used were the same, the frequency of their occurrence was different in the tw o modes. It was found that the frequency o f tw o discourse functions
reacting to critiques and/or responding to eliciting was higher in asynchronous than the asynchronous ones. As discussed earlier, the students felt they had more time to reflect and write their responses during the asynchronous activities. So the asynchronous interaction was critically thought out. Similar findings were reported by Levin et al. (2006), who discovered that interactions during asynchronous mode reflected more critical thinking than during synchronous mode. In the same vein, Sotillo (2000, p. 82) found that "discourse functions in asynchronous discussions were more constrained than those found in synchronous discussions and similar to the question-response-evaluation sequence of the traditional language classroom/ The scarcity of the use of discourse function "Greetings" in the synchronous mode may be attributed to the relative lack of form ality in the synchronous mode. This finding contradicts Johnson (2006) who reported overall a higher percentage o f social-emotional interactions occurred in the synchronous mode than in the asynchronous mode.
An investigation o f the interaction data along with a review o f students" interview data and observations revealed that although the tasks set for the students were teacher initiated in both synchronous and asynchronous modes, after a discussion took off, the interaction was mostly student dominated. This fact, as has been discussed in Chapter 2 (2.2.4), reflects that CMC provided a collaborating platform where the learners fe lt less inhibited, interacted more freely, and collaborated more than the face-to-face settings. It was observed during class room discussions that the students were tim id or shy to a great degree and had to be encouraged repeatedly by their teachers to participate in the discussions. At times there seemed to be a total communication breakdown so the teacher intervened and tried to keep the discussion going by initiating various short questions addressed to specific students. As a result such classroom discussions were
were less teacher dominated and more student centered. This shows the affordances of CMC for interactivity and support, thus linking in with the social constructivist perspective as pointed out by Warschauer (1997). According to Warschauer (1997), by using CMC students can construct and reconstruct their knowledge through dialogue, text-based interaction, web-conferencing, and face-to-face discussions. In such an environment where students interact using w ritten text, the meaning-making process o f learners improves and they mutually build knowledge societies (Harasim 1997).
To conclude, we may infer that both synchronous and asynchronous activities were helpful to students in their meaning-making process and as Bacabac (2008) suggests both are equally effective in promoting collaboration among learners. In the process of this collaborative interaction using various discourse functions, CMC provided students with an extended platform to become virtual members of a particular discourse community of their online forums, their particular class and their specific academic writing course.
5.2.2 How does interaction via CMC tools influence EFL learners' production of