Investigating the Nature of EFL Pair Interactions in a Computer-Mediated Communication Task

In this article. we examined the patterns of pair interactions that emerged in a computermediated text-reconstruction task where 16 Chinese tertiary EFL learners worked in eight self-selected pairs in the chat rooms. This study drew on Storch's (2002) work on the nature of ESL pair work. Quantitative and qualitative data presented in this study suggested that six pairs fell under one of Storch's four patterns of interaction. The interactions of two pairs were more dynamic and did not match any of the four patterns. We did not find the significant relationship between thc pair patterns and the performance of their individualized posttests developed from language-related episodes during interaction. However, we did find that learning is more likely to occur when learners collaborate and jointly work out a successful solution in case of an emerging problem than when they have disagreements and cannot finally resolve them.

Published with permission from the copyright holder.
This is published in International Journal of curriculum Development and Practice, 2009 Vol.11 pp. 35-49
(C)2009 by Japan Curriculum Research and Development Association