Computer-Mediated Communication in Korean-English Chat Rooms: Tandem Learning in an International Languages Program

This longitudinal case study draws on sociocultural theory to investigate language learning as a socially mediated process through computer-mediated communicative tasks in an international languages class. The study reports on the design, implementation, and outcomes of a thematic, task-based curricular innovation in which paired Korean- and English-speaking peers, each learning the other's language, collaborated on chat homework assignments. Examination of these chat interactions between experts and novices, with the tandem partners fulfilling each role in turn, reveals how on-line collaborative discourse supports knowledge building within this cross-linguistic learning environment. Data from chat exchanges show how these students were able to learn and teach contextually meaningful and appropriate linguistic and cultural behaviour through socially mediated actions, using the meaning-making resources within their own learning community. Specifically, the findings show the ways in which learners appropriated a variety of language practices, developed awareness of self in relation to others, and participated in expert and novice discursive practices in the construction of meaning.