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LSL SECOND-LANGUAGE TEACHING AND LEARNING INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO L2 WRITING AS INTERPERSONAL COMMUNICATIONMLA 2016 – Austin, Texas – January 8, 2016

Fabrizio FornaraFlorida State University

Promoting L2 Interpersonal Written Communication Using WhatsApp

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Writing to Learn

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• Learning to write: A skill that instructors teach and students learn and perfect through practice;

• Writing to learn: A means for language learning (Cumming, 2011).

A repeated writing practice in a meaningful context helps learners proceduralize and automatize forms that have already been taught explicitly (DeKeyser, 1998).

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Students perceive the immediate, interactive, and synchronous modes of communication as more useful for the gratifications of their social needs. (Vrocharidou & Efthymiou, 2012) MIM enhances productive communication among learning clusters through the sharing of mutual intentions, social objects, learning resources and needs. (Rambe & Bere, 2013)

(Mobile) Instant Messaging

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Text Messaging“Text messaging […] [is] the most widely-used basic feature or app […] [and] the feature that is used most frequently” (Smith, 2015)

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WhatsApp is a cross-platform instant messaging application for smartphones. It enables users to send and receive location information, images, video, audio and text messages in real-time to individuals and groups of friends at no cost. […] The nature and intent of WhatsApp messages tend to be social, informal and conversational in nature. (Church & de Oliveira, 2013)

WhatsApp has more than 900 million users worldwide (Mashable, September 4, 2015)

WhatsApp

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WhatsApp has been used in secondary and higher education to:• Communicate with students;• Foster a positive social atmosphere and cultivate a

sense of belonging and community;• Enable students to share information and work as a

team;• Improve student access to learning materials (Bouhnik

& Deshen, 2014) WhatsApp promotes social interaction and knowledge construction through spontaneous discussions and enables students to assume control and ownership of the learning (Rambe & Bere, 2013).

WhatsApp for Education

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Social interaction is viewed as a primary source of learning. When students interact amongst themselves, acquisition-rich discourse is more likely to ensue (Ellis, 2005).

Interaction is beneficial to acquisition when students have control of the discourse topic (Ellis, 1999).

“To foster interpersonal interactions […] CMC partners may be left with adequate access and time to develop” (Walther, 1996).

Interpersonal Interactions

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• To observe L2 student interactions during a semi-structured daily practice on a mobile instant messaging application (WhatsApp).

• Of particular interest is to observe which topics encourage student interpersonal communication and to understand students’ view on the activity.

Purpose of the Study

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Sample: • Third level Italian language students: N = 24• 3 groups: • N = 7 (Summer 2015, 19 days)• N = 11 (Fall 2015, 15 days)• N = 6 (Fall 2015, 15 days)

Summer 2015:• Messages: N = 448• Students: N = 297• Instructor: N = 151

The Activity (cont.)

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The Activity

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The Activity (cont.)

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Participant Interactions

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Participant Interactions (cont.)

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Participant Interactions (cont.)

Fornara (2015, November). Factors Influencing Second Language Student Production on Twitter. AECT 2015

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Student Interactions

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Topics

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Student Reaction

N=24

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Advantages

What did you like most about the activity? Being able to actually apply what we’ve learned to real life. Using Italian in a conversational setting. / Talking with classmates. Seeing Italian used in everyday context.

N=24

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Challenges

What did you like least about the activity? My classmates posted a lot, to the point it was annoying. Sometimes it was hard to find a way to insert myself in the conversation. It was one big conversation so side conversations between a few people blew up my

phone.N=24

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Student Preferences

N=24

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Student Preferences (cont.)

N=24

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Student Comments• It was essentially doing small Italian activities throughout

the day, which really helped retain and extract knowledge.• Great way to build relationships, practice the language, and

earn credit.• Using WhatsApp helped me learn vocabulary that I

regularly use in English in an Italian context.• WhatsApp overall improved my ability of thinking in Italian.

• Maybe different groups based on likes and dislikes. I found myself unable to be involved in many of the conversations almost daily about sports.

• It was an interesting activity, though I felt a little excluded at times.

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Future Activity / Study• Promote student collaboration and social

knowledge construction through structured tasks that model the conversational patterns and topics observed during student semi-spontaneous interactions.

• Observe how a practice in a mobile instant messaging environment affects student production of the target language in face-to-face conversations.

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ff11@my.fsu.edu @ffornara

MLA 2016 – Austin, Texas – January 8, 2016

Fabrizio FornaraFlorida State University

Questions?