Abstract This study in second language acquisition (SLA) investigates the influence of self-portrayal of language learners in an interactive online L2 learning environment from a social-interactionist research perspective. This thesis has a mainly theoretical focus and will integrate concepts of online communication with SLA methodology. This work reviews some classical perspectives on chats and message boards as environment for online communication in chapter two and develops a list of features to classify them from a second language acquisition perspective. In order to assist the main argument of the thesis that an integrated view of learners within a learning context is necessary to fully use the advantages of an interactive online learning environment, the second language acquisition model of Marysia Johnson (2004) is discussed in chapter three. Using the premises of the model, which result from the application of Lev Vygotskys sociocultural theory and Mikhail Bakhtins dialogized heteroglossia, key features for the later data analysis are pointed out. Those are the dismissal of the separation of language competence and language performance, a view of language that exceeds mere morphosyntactical concerns and the overcoming of the mainstream mentalist SLA approach in favor of a socioculturally oriented dialogical language learning model. The approach of Bonny Norton (2000) to identity is used as an analytical framework to complete Johnsons model developing a methodology for chapter four. The data analysis in chapter five is used to prove the validity of the model in showing that the developed model is applicable for the analysis of an online context. After a description of the course environment and a preliminary analysis, an in depth qualitative approach is used to point out the links between sociocultural theory and identity theory. Afterwards, I will give a short summary of my most important results and finish my thesis with some suggestions for further research.

Organizational support for cooperative work has been shifted from using Face-to-Face (FTF) communication in collocated groups to using Communication-Mediated-Communication (CMC) in dispersed groups. This new and growing form of communication has stimulated scholars to study the differences of group performance between FTF and CMC. Task categorization has been the methodology chosen for several empirical research studies. These studies conclude that the effectiveness of a communication medium for a given task depends on the degree to which there is a fit between the richness of information that can be transmitted via a system’s technology and the information richness requirements of that task. However, there are numerous problems associated with using task categorization in such studies. One of these limitations is that categorization forces the researcher to enclose a task situation into a general predetermined category that may not describe the real nature of the activity. For instance, task categorization does not capture the dynamic interaction of groups performing tasks that involve variation. This thesis discusses the weakness and limitations of this approach and, using conclusions drawn from experimental results, propose the adoption of a more systematic approach based on the concept of Ashby’s law of requisite variety. Findings on the differences in performance of FTF groups versus CMC groups of 39 three-person groups of engineering undergraduate students revealed that the group performance was not affected by the communication medium but rather by variation in the task (low and high complexity).

Issues concerning communication, information technology and democracy are focused points of studies in politics, sociology and communication. In the past few decades, the Internet has changed the image and ecology of mass media. The Internet provides more opportunities than other media for individuals to participate in the public discourse. Many scholars have suggested that Internet¡¦s characteristics such as real-time, interactivity, openness, and equality may help balance the power and bias exerted by traditional mass media. In this research three Internet forums (board) in Taiwan were analyzed by adopting the content analysis to evaluate the quality of discourse based on the communicative act theory proposed by Habermas. Specifically, we investigate several issues: Is the online forum an open, equal public place? Do participants interact with one another? Do they reach rational-critical discussion within an environment lack of social context cues? Do those virtual debates lead to cohesion and influence the real-life political process? There are several findings. First, although online forums are more open than traditional media¡¦s, individuals without internet facilities and skills are excluded from participation. Even within the forums, participants are not totally free to join or speak due to the registration, written netiquette norms, and hierarchical control systems. Secondly, instead of equally joining the discussion, a small percentage of people contribute to a majority of discourse in two websites¡¦ forums. That is, although online forums provide an opportunity for democratic discourse, it does not mean that everyone subscribed to the online discussion will participate equally. Thirdly, it is possible for individuals to reach rational-critical discussion within a CMC environment, the virtual debates rarely lead to consensus, let alone influencing real-life policy-making. In sum, this study concludes that the Internet has not become an alternative to the traditional media as a public sphere.

<p>Människor tillskriver varandra egenskaper. Detta sker omedvetet och systematiskt och syftar till att underlätta förståelsen av omvärlden. Syftet med detta arbete har varit att undersöka i vilken utsträckning det är möjligt att utifrån vald språkstil i ett e-postmeddelande bedöma en persons egenskaper, vilket i denna rapport benämnts en persons sociala styrka. En engelskspråkig undersökning har legat till grund för arbetet och tanken har - förutom ovanstående - varit att utröna hur väl ett experimentellt engelskspråkigt undersökningsresultat står sig under förhållandevis naturalistiska svenska förhållanden. Resultatet visar inte entydigt att språkstilen styr de egenskaper som författaren tillskrivs. Framräknade medelvärden ger en indikation på att kraftfullt formulerade meddelanden i större utsträckning bedömts som författade av personer besittande en hög social styrka, men endast ett fåtal av resultaten var statistiskt signifikanta. Bl.a. kan en viss skillnad i mäns och kvinnors bedömning skönjas, en skillnad som dock kan vara ett utslag av att grupperna storleksmässigt varit olika.</p>

<p>Abstract</p><p>This essay deals with the creation and usage of nicknames in synchronous CMC. Nicknames from four different IRC chat conversations related to three different topic groups have been examined. The method draws on Bechar-Israeli’s (1996) categorisation of nicknames, which has been adapted to suit the type of data sampled. Three research questions have been posed, which, in view of other studies related to this field of research (e.g. Ellison et al. 2006, Scheidt 2001, Chester & Gwynne 1998, etc.) have been examined to obtain information about the degree of anonymity and the topic-relatedness of nicknames used in chatrooms. The results show that users participating in synchronous CMC indeed follow topic-related rules for self-presentation and that anonymity has varying importance in different chatrooms.</p>

This Report addresses the importance of intercultural communicative competence among foreign language learners and the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technology to achieve this goal in the classroom. CMC technology provides learners a unique opportunity to interact with students of different cultures, a situation that allows for experiential learning to occur and which has been shown to lead to gains in intercultural communicative competence. The work begins with a definition of culture and intercultural communicative competence, followed by a review of general approaches used to facilitate such competence in students, and finally a review of the literature on the positive and negative aspects of using CMC for cross-cultural learning. As the aim of this work is to offer teachers a resource and guidance for implementing intercultural exchanges via the use of CMC tools, the Report concludes with suggestions on best practices for using CMC in the foreign language classroom. / text

The effects of b-glucan on corn tortilla texture were evaluated. Barley flour (9.7% b-glucan) was substituted at 2.5, 5 and 10% for dry masa flour in corn tortillas. Texture was evaluated after 4 hr and up to 7 d storage at 4°C. Substitution of 2.5-10% barley flour significantly improved tortilla texture. Combined effects of barley flour (0-2.5%), maltogenic amylase (0-1650MAU) and carboxymethylcellulose (0-0.5%) were evaluated using surface response methodology. Barley flour increased rollability, pliability, energy dissipated and reduced rupture force and final stiffness. Overall, maltogenic amylase decreased rupture force and Young's modulus but decreased rupture distance, rollability and pliability at levels above 825 MAU. CMC improved rollability, pliability, and rupture distance. The best response was found using barley flour and CMC with 825 MAU, where rollability, pliability, rupture distance and energy dissipated increased while rupture force, Young's modulus and final stiffness decreased. A 70% barley b-glucan concentrate combined with amylase (550 MAU) or CMC (0-0.5%) was evaluated in corn tortillas. Amylase combined with b-glucan did not improve texture. Tortillas with b-glucan and CMC had significantly improved pliability, rollability, final stiffness and energy dissipated. Texture measurements analysis showed that depending on the stage of storage, objective and subjective methods correlate differently. Subjective and objective measurements of texture were not correlated at 4 hr storage. At the end of storage, pliability had significant correlations with stress relaxation measurements, but rollability had higher correlation coefficients with extensibility measurements. Pliability had higher R2 and lower coefficients of variation compared to rollability. Sensory evaluation was conducted using reheated 14-day-old tortillas of control, 825 MAU with 0.25% CMC, 0.12% b-glucans, 0.18% b-glucan with 0.375% CMC, and 0.24% b-glucan with 0.25% CMC. All tortillas had similar appearance, flexibility, gumminess, flavor and overall quality. Softness and chewiness of treatments with 0.12% b-glucan or 0.24% b-glucan with 0.25% CMC were similar to control. Other tortillas were significantly tougher and chewier. b-glucan may be the active ingredient in barley flour that modifies firming of corn tortillas during storage. Barley flour is inexpensive and effectively improves texture of corn tortillas.

This study, adopting a case study approach with a group of beginning-level FFL (French as a foreign language) learners, investigated the possibility that initial level foreign language learners may acquire oral skills through synchronous CMC, and the impacts of synchronous CMC learning on their motivation, as well as their social presence. The participants were 12 FFL beginners in a Taiwanese university. Divided into three groups, they were required to conduct three tasks in three different learning environments (video/audio, audio and f2f) during an academic semester (18 weeks). The semester constituted cycles of three-week practices on those tasks. The contents of the tasks were inter-connected. Before each oral task, all the participants had to conduct the same task in synchronous text chat. The data for this study was collected from the participants’ performance in three oral tests held at the initial, middle and final phases of the study, their online chat records, interview transcriptions, learning journal, questionnaires completed at the beginning and the end of the study, and the instructor’s observation journal. The results suggest that these three CMC learning modes bring only partial benefits in terms of learners’ oral proficiency development. It is factors generated by the three learning environments, rather than the environments themselves, that have the largest impact on the learners’ oral proficiency development, learning motivation and attitudes towards the target language. However, the differences in the environments are reflected in particular in the learners’ perception of social presence.

Distance learning began as a means of catering to students who needed to learn in isolated, individual learning environments but, more recently, has been evolving to offer an interactive and collaborative learning environment supported by Computer Mediated Communication (CMC). However, research has found that not all online discussions are productive for learning and that simply making discussions boards accessible to students does not achieve the interactive and collaborative experience for which they are promoted. One of the first requirements needed for successful online discussions is student participation. This study sought to identify what encourages student participation in online discussions. Motivation and social presence were investigated in this study because they have been identified as two concepts that assist in the encouragement of student participation. Motivation assists participation because it is the process whereby goal-directed activity is both instigated and sustained, and social presence because it has been found to increase interaction. This study sought information regarding what motivated or demotivated student participation in online discussions and what Social Presence behaviours students found most important for maintaining their desire to participate in online discussions. It also investigated relationships among, and changes in, student state motivation, student sense of social presence and student perceived sources of motivation and demotivation across the course of a semester. Finally, students' opinion about their motivation, sense of social presence and reasons for participation were investigated through open-ended questions. A Sequential Exploratory design was used to first obtain breadth of data (quantitative) through online surveys (n equals 60 participants). This included a test/retest design. Depth of the data (qualitative) was then explored through interviews that were based on the results of the quantitative data analysis (n equals 14 participants). The main findings of this study were that students' sense of social presence changed significantly across the course of the semester and this change was a decrease in sense of social presence for 50 percent of the students. Context and Social factors were mentioned more frequently as both motivators and demotivators for participation than Structure/format factors. Correlations revealed a significant relationship between state motivation and social presence. Finally, open-ended questions generated a number of major themes that help to promote participation. All of these findings have implications for teachers and designers of online courses. They show that many factors influence student participation and that some of these factors may change over the course of a semester. Teachers and designers should use this information when designing and implementing courses to not only initiate student participation, but also to maintain participation throughout the course.

Interaction involves people communicating and reacting to each other. This process is key to the study of discourse, but it is not easy to study systematically how interaction takes place in a specific communicative event, or how it is typically performed over a series of repeated communicative events. However, with a written record of the interaction, it becomes possible to study the process in some detail. This thesis investigates interaction through asynchronous written discussion forums in a computer-mediated learning environment. In particular, this study investigates pragmatic aspects of the communicative event which the asynchronous online discussions comprise. The first case study examines response patterns to messages by looking at the content of initial messages and responses, in order to determine the extent to which characteristics of the messages themselves or other situational factors affect the interaction. The second study examines in what ways participants use a range of discourse devices, including formulaic politeness, humour and supportive feedback as community building strategies in the interaction. The third study investigates the role of the subject line of messages in the interaction, for example by examining how participants choose different types of subject lines for different types of messages. The fourth study examines to what extent features serving a deictic function are drawn on in the interaction and then compares the findings to both oral conversation and formal academic discourse. The overall findings show a complex communicative situation shaped by the medium itself, type of activity, the academic discipline and topic of discussion and by the social and cultural aspects of tertiary education in an online learning environment. In addition, the findings may also provide evidence of learning. / The four case studies presented in Language and interaction in online asynchronous communication in university level English courses investigate written discussion forum interaction in a computer-mediated learning environment. These studies deal with different, yet related, aspects of discussion forum communication. Aspects included are the labeling and response patterns of messages, community-building strategies among participants and features of informal conversation and formal academic writing in the messages. Building on discourse analysis combined with content analysis and corpus method, the work systematically examines the linguistic patterns of communication in the discussion forums. The findings show that there are multiple factors at work simultaneously that affect the linguistic choices by the discourse participants. The constraints and opportunities of the communication are not only connected to the fact that it is computer-mediated, but also to the fact that it is written and in a particular academic environment. Knowledge of the choices available and of what factors potentially affect them is useful for anybody involved in research on net-based teaching and learning.