The main objective of this research was to describe the mechanisms for engagement with affordances that help to sustain written interpersonal interactions of students in online discussion forums of a virtual learning environment while they were learning English as a foreign language. The notion of affordance was discussed in this study according to three dimensions: (i) environmental, (ii) technological, and (iii) linguistic, associating a pragmatic theory to the latter (GREENO, 1994; VAN LIER, 2000; LAMY & HAMPEL, 2007). The research findings showed that the environmental and technological affordances contributed to the construction of students’ presence as well as of a learning community. New forms of online interactions afforded new forms of language learning, especially by the movement of relexicalization and gap-filling.
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