TASK 2: ARTICLE REVIEW

An Investigation of Communicative Competence of ESL students Using Electronic Discussion Boards.

The article that I chose to write a review on is entitled “An Investigation of Communicative Competence of ESL Students Using Electronic Discussion Boards”.  The research was first published in 2006, in the Journal of Research on Technology in Education. Specifically, it was published in the Spring 2006 edition in book volume 38, number 3. The research study was carried out by four researchers from University of Missouri, Columbia. The researchers are Shenhua Zha, Paul Kelly, MeeAeng Park and Gail Fitzgerald. In general, the study focuses on the use of electronic discussion boards with elementary school students who are learning English as their second language. The study aims to investigate students’ communicative competence in a computer-mediated communication environment. The study is an alternative to the conventional chalk and paper teaching method.  Emphasis is given on how the participants interact with each other in their second language (English) in order to get their meaning conveyed. Ultimately, the major focus of this study is to examine the patterns of ESL students’ communicative competence through peer interaction in collaborative versus individual learning tasks in Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). 

An online discussion board will be used to assess the students’ skills in communication. The project was conducted in seven elementary ESL classes from mid March to early May. The study involves twenty eight ESL students in Grades 2 to 5. They came from seven classes from six different elementary schools. There were eighteen male students and ten female students. Their first language was different from one another. Seven students spoke Spanish and five students spoke Chinese, the others spoke Russian, French, Korean, Arabic, Pohnpeian, Urdu or Samoan. Students from the same school were assigned into different groups, so that students will only discuss with their group members through online discussion board, not face-to-face. The discussion board is hosted on the school system’s server. The procedure of the research is, students were given six weeks to interact with their peers on the discussion board. The discussion board that they used had a spell checker tool; therefore, the likelihood for them to post a message with spelling errors small. 

There were several activities that the students need to accomplish in their respective groups. The activities are targeted to get the students to interact and exchange ideas with their friends through discussion boards. There were three activities provided to promote interaction and online discussion in the second language. Activity 1 is “Creating Clubs”, Activity 2 is “Recommending a Holiday Menu” and Activity 3 is “Planning a party”. Creating Clubs required the students discuss and come up with a club name and suggest two mascots for their clubhouse flags. They have to agree on the names, flag colours and mascots and finally design and draw flag for their house. The second task was “Recommending a Holiday Menu”. The tasks required them to discuss traditional meals served for holidays in the students ‘countries or culture and then to decide on a holiday menu recommend for a lunch at their schools. The third task was “Planning a Party” where students were required to work together to plan a party. The task included planning food, arranging activities and planning a budget. After party plans were finalized, each student wrote an invitation to the party. This activity required an agreement on details of their party plans. 

The research used both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze 956 messages posted by twenty eight ESL students to the discussion board during the six week period of time. Students’ messages to the discussion board were captured in rich text format (RTF) for importing into NVivo 2.0. Qualitative Analysis Software (QSR) program was then used to generate findings. Four codes adopted from ESL Standards were used. The indicators were used to match the type of communication occurred on the discussion boards. They were Indicator 1. 1A (Asking peers opinions, preference and desires), Indicator 1.1C (Offering and responding to compliments and invitations), Indicator 1.2E (Stating and supporting personal reference) and finally Indicator 3.1F (Greet and take leave appropriately). Results showed that majority of students did not perform as expected. Students did not participate much when they were required to interact in English. In activity 2, students mainly worked individually and not collaboratively to reach a consensus. However, the number of students who prefer to use L2 to demonstrate personal expression and enjoyment increased. However, the correct usage of L2 in Activity 1 and 2 decreased in terms of the use of appropriate English variety, register and genre according to audience, purpose and setting. In short, this electronic discussion board offered an excellent opportunity to observe and facilitate ESL students to use English for interaction.

I found that the research is interesting in the sense that it provides a new dimension for students to learn second language aside from the conventional ones. Moreover, using discussion boards to facilitate interaction would be a great advantage particularly for reticent students. They will feel very comfortable to get their opinions put across without having to compete with other members of their class who were perhaps more talkative, confident and less shy. In addition to that, this research interests me because the researchers have done a good work to bring students of different L1 to sit together in a group and get their task done. I feel that it is not easy on the student’s part to be sitting together in one group trying to reach consensus with each other using their second language. Most importantly, online board discussion promotes correction and alteration to the students’ way of writing when influenced by their peers’ messages. This is because discussion board provides the sense of audience, thus writers feel the need to be careful when writing. 

Furthermore, the other reason why this research is of my interest partly because it managed to prove primary function of language is communication and interaction, meaning how language is influential and capable to change the direction of certain things. With greater competence in language, a lot of things can be accomplished and conveyed to the other party. Therefore, such activity as this is needed to improve communicative competence among ESL students especially. This is where I feel that the research is strong at. This research also intrigues me in the sense that it managed to explore another medium in L2 instruction (through technology) that many would probably regard as insignificant. This is because lately, much emphasis has been given to another computer based method such as using blog, Twitter, Facebook, Video Blog, Voice Blog, Chat Room, Email, YouTube and so forth in second language instruction. Although there are studies using forums or discussion board in computer mediated ESL classroom, I feel that there are not much extensive studies done on the method. All in all, I think that this research is very well conducted. The researchers took into account matters that may be seemed as small, but actually would bring a great difference if neglected. However, I feel that six weeks is probably too short for the students to extend their communicative competence. It is also a short time for teachers and researchers to observe apparent improvement or changes in students’ L2 interactions. Another thing that worried me is that if using technology actually will cause more damage than good. Although discussion board provides platform for reserved students to participate in their learning, I wonder if it will cause them to continue to be more reserved in future. This is mainly because they feel that there is no need to go out from their comfort zone and mingle with others because at the end of the day, they can resort to online discussion board to get their opinions heard. 

The research can be done in Malaysian context because of the myriad background of the students. Besides, the teaching pedagogy in Malaysian setting is too teacher oriented with little emphasis on student-centred education. Moreover, school is Malaysia is focusing too much on product instead of the process of the learning itself. Therefore, I feel that it is about time for this study to be incorporated in Malaysian school so as to provide students the autonomy to control their learning. To conclude, Malaysian students’ differences in terms of cultures, first language and English proficiency will be an ideal setting for the researchers to start from.

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