No abstract
Drawing both on conversation analysis and text linguistics, this article retraces the emergence of a new communicative practice in an online discussion forum: Based on data from an academic learning environment, we demonstrate how peers in a student study group start using the "edit button" which allows them to modify in retrospect not only their own but also other people's posts. This communicative practice of post editing in online discussion forums develops in four stages: It starts out as simple postings of messages on a discussion board. Next, the collocutors make use of the edit button to change their own posts, and, in a dialogical manner that of their discussion partners. Finally, it comes down to a complex form of exchange between the interlocutors who innovatively use the edit button within a single post. By using the edit button in innovative ways the participants bring together sequentially related messages in a single post that are usually spread over multiple posts. We argue that the emergence of this innovative use of the strategy of "sequential compression" (sequenzielle Verdichtung), as we shall call it, may be understood as an answer both to the affordances of asynchronous communication in discussion forums and to the learning situation which is characterized by pressure of time calling for new and innovative strategies.
Current concepts in writing research primarily focus on monological texts, by which we mean texts that do not demand a reply. But nowadays, dialogical writing -the exchange of messages via e.g. email, text message or internet forum -is increasingly prevalent in private, educational and professional life. We therefore argue that concepts of writing research should also be made applicable to dialogical writing. Based on empirical data from two university e-learning classes, we show how students use communicative routines in order to manage a specific (writing) task: During their group work students face the challenge of initiating new steps and mobilising other group members to proceed with the project. Our study shows that texts accomplishing this task usually follow a three-part structure: They give reasons why writing to the group becomes necessary ("account"), they request the start or continuation of working ("projection") and they present a personal contribution to the task ("achievement/input"). In cooperative online work, appropriate dialogical writing is a crucial skill. This "dialogical text competence", as we call it, cannot be taken for granted; indeed it must be taught and practiced as it differs from competences necessary in face-to-face interaction or for writing texts in non-dialogical contexts. We therefore close our paper with a discussion of our results under the aspect of learning and facilitating dialogical text competence in contexts that offer practical experience. Abstract: Current concepts in writing research primarily focus on monological texts, by which we mean texts that do not demand a reply. But nowadays, dialogical writing -the exchange of messages via e.g. e-mail, text message or internet forumis increasingly prevalent in private, educational and professional life. We therefore argue that concepts of writing research should also be made applicable to dialogical writing. Based on empirical data from two university e-learning classes, we show how students use communicative routines in order to manage a specific (writing) task: During their group work students face the challenge of initiating new steps and mobilising other group members to proceed with the project. Our study shows that texts accomplishing this task usually follow a three-part structure: They give reasons why writing to the group becomes necessary ("account"), they request the start or continuation of working ("projection") and they present a personal contribution to the task ("achievement/input"). In cooperative online work, appropriate dialogical writing is a crucial skill. This "dialogical text competence", as we call it, cannot be taken for granted; indeed it must be taught and practiced as it differs from competences necessary in face-to-face interaction or for writing texts in non-dialogical contexts. We therefore close our paper with a discussion of our results under the aspect of learning and facilitating dialogical text competence in contexts that offer practical experience.
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