Bai, Mei Lee, Chang-in Liu, Fuchen Kang, Feiyu
Nowadays there are
limited researches on the online task-based writing based on theory, and
neither is there enough analysis on experiments to guide further research.
The aim of this
article is to research the nature of online task-based writing based on its
theory roots and the characteristics of the Internet, and through online
writing experiments. It states that the nature of online task-based writing is
to acquire English writing by using it online, and the Internet can enhance
social interaction and cooperation which are the key points in task-based writing.
Also the benefits of online task-based writing will be analyzed.
The significance of
this article is to combine writing theory with the Internet, to analyze Design
writing experiments to have a clear conceptualization of online task-based
writing, to explore the strengths and weaknesses of Design online task-based
writing, moreover, to provide suggestion and model of Design task-based writing
for further research.
Key words: task-based writing, authentic, interactive, cooperative
Theoretical Background on Social constructivism and
task-based writing
According to constructivist, learning requires students to build a personal interpretation of experience by selecting and transforming information, constructing hypotheses and making decisions; learning is an active construction process relating different levels of knowledge at the same time.
Moreover, language learning is not an isolated
activity; instead it is as social activity, a continuous generative process
implemented in the social-verbal interaction of a user. Words acquire a high social polish and
luster by the effect of reactions and responses on the part of a social
audience(Warschauer, M, 1996). Thus, social constructivism that emphasizes
social interaction in language acquisition earned more attention in English
learning. It believes that language learning is a social practice beyond a
purely individual reflection, and it is a process of gaining entry to a
discourse of practitioners via apprenticeship assistance from peers and teachers.
Going a step
further, Cobb (1994) claims that individuals and social aspects of learning can
interact over time to strengthen one another in a ‘reciprocal spiral
relationship.’ From this point of view, cognitive and social dimensions overlap
in a co-constitutive relationship.
According to these
theories, writing should combine cognitive and social elements together in the
process of self-discovery and social interaction. It should require students not only to know how to write,
but also to know how to use writing in social context, a process of adjusting
mental writing models to accommodate new experience in social and culture
context. These requirements lead
to task-based writing in English learning.
In task-based writing, writing is driven by a task and used in social interaction. It is believed that form and meaning eventually are subject to the requirement of purpose. The aim of task-based writing is to improve an individual’s writing competence based on purposeful communication which cannot be separated from social context.
Social interaction
as the process of task-based writing has some features that can stimulate
learning and writing. These features are named as authenticity, autonomy and collaboration,
respectively. The theme of
authenticity in English learning resembles real world communication. In
writing, authenticity means writing in real communication context, to real
world readers, and by real English used outside the classroom. Autonomy
stresses on the active role of students, which means students take charge of
their own learning, select their methods, and monitor and evaluate their progress
and achievements. In writing, social interaction encourages students to
actively dominate their writing, to learn with individual’s styles, and to be
responsible for their own writing based on self-reflection. Collaboration is a goal-directed social
interaction (Vygotsky 1962). It
involves heterogeneous working together towards a group task in which each
member is individually accountable for part of an outcome. In can enhance
writing from three aspects in terms of idea generation in brainstorming,
meaning construction in the drafting stage and peer review.
Due to the important
role of social interaction, how to enhance social interaction is the key point
in task-based writing. The
Internet as a worldwide communication media can be used to facilitate social
interaction. One of the major functions for language learning is the WWW (World
Wide Web) which creates interactive information access and publication places.
Typical activities on the WWW are one-to-none information access and
one-to-many publication.
One-to-none activities, such as online journals, wring lab and data
bases, etc, provide tons of text-based, audio and video materials for English
writing. It can satisfy differences of content in students’ learning. Online one-to-many activities reflect
in lectures that allows students to broadcast information to entire groups and
to write to hundreds of thousands of readers, even they work alone.
Based on theory and the characteristics of the
Internet, design task-based writing mostly presents as homepage making, is one
of the writing activities adopted in task-based English writing. The WWW is used to facilitate multipath
information searching and publication, and provides social context as well as
flexibility in writing.
Another common used online activity is many-to-many
online discussion and forums, such as discussion board, students list. It provides less threatening
communication environment (Kelm 1992) with reduced social context clues, such
as nationalities, gender factors and age, and offer a strong equalizing effect
on participation by reducing the social dynamics, such as turn-taking,
interruption, balance, equality and decision-making. These factors encourage students produce more output in
online writing.
The EnglishNet Project is a design task-based web
project for ESL students in Tourism in an Intensive English course held at the
University of Illinois at Chicago in 1996. It aims to let students acquire
English writing and WWW skills by using it to write a homepage which introduces
the city of Chicago. In order to have a better understanding about the effects
of the Internet on writing, a simple survey consisting of eight respondents was
carried out.
The task in the English Net Project is to design a
team homepage as well as personal homepages. For example, the team homepage Chicago business contains
three personal homepages The History of Chicago and Chicago newspapers, Chicago
Tours, and Pullman Factory. It
requires students to work together as well as to work alone. Thus the
characteristics of EnglishNet Project are presented as multi-communication:
human-to-text and human-to-human communication.
In human-to-text communication, the WWW provides
authentic readers, multipath and multimedia publication to support design
task-based writing. This in turn
benefits students with an authentic learning environment. First of all,
students having authentic readers to read their writing, tend to write with
purpose. Thus the shortcomings of
traditional design task, which has difficulty in distributing product and where
students mostly write without real readers, are overcome. For example, in Chen-chen Kuo’s
instruction on Chicago museum, he wrote, ‘Disappointed? Me too. There are a lot
of top museums in Chicago. Once
you go into the museum, you don’t want to leave. Here are some places I suggest you must go.’ Talking to real readers, students
regard writing as a meaningful communication. Thus writing has purpose. This purpose naturally leads to writing with the
consideration of readers’ requirements, personal interests and authentic
English. It helps students
transmit writing competence to be performance in meaningful communication.
Second, online writing integrates writing in an
authentic communication environment.
For example, writing online, different paragraphs of writing are
distinguished by color; multipath content is structured by hyperlink; and
self-introduction and scene description are decorated by multimedia. These features not only largely enhance
communication, but also indicate that writing is for communication, instead of
being practiced isolated.
The WWW is also good at providing hyperlink and
multimedia information searching which enhances autonomous writing in terms of
free topics and individual styles. Free topic in traditional design task is
only good on paper, since students lack enough materials for writing. But online
newspapers, magazines and multimedia provide limitless authentic materials to
meet students’ different needs of content learning. No matter whether is
Thailand girls comparing the weather in Thailand to that in Chicago, or sport
fans writing about the Chicago OX, they can get tons of resources at a click of
their finger. Moreover, hyperlink and multimedia also permits learning and
writing with individual styles. In
offline writing, teachers can only meet the majority’s needs, since students’
characteristics and background are often diverse. But online writing can
strengthen everybody’s learning process by multipath and multimedia
interaction. For example, to
reflective students, who can discuss a topic in depth but lack the imagination
to have a wide brainstorming, they benefit in online discussion by DIWE. For impulsive students, who can think
fast but lack accuracy, online dictionaries and grammar books can help them to
be more accurate. Advanced
students can write an essay. For
lower level English learners, a short introduction paragraph with vivid pictures
and hyperlinks also can provide lots of information. The data in the survey states that 100% (eight) of the
students thought that the EnglishNet Project allowed them to use different
learning methods and writing styles to meet their individuals’
requirements. This implies that
students can study more efficiently since they can construct writing competence
in individualistic ways.
In human-to-human communication, collaborative
discussion which is used to enhance brainstorm, drafting and peer review is
enhanced by DIWE. Students tend to
generate more ideas in brainstorm and be more open in peer review, because
computer-mediated group discussion provides multipath for discussion, and
reduces social context clue.
75%(six out of eight) of the students claimed online group discussion
helped them generate many ideas about homepage design and writing. In other words, it helps students
explore and give them a clear mind on writing purpose and content. Combining online and offline
collaboration, 100% (eight) of the students claimed that they studied harder in
collaboration despite they sometimes work alone.
The weakness of the EnglishNet Project is
the lack of interactive publication.
As a mere introduction of Chicago, essays in the EnglishNet Project are
mostly descriptions and statements which do not encourage online response and
discussion. However, one of the main advantages of the WWW publication is the
interactive function of peer review.
Thus, the topic of writing should be more argumentive, which encourages wider
discussion and more feedback from readers. It can benefit students in higher motivation and on-going
writing processes.
When the Internet is used individually, it
has some problems, since it contains lots of chaos—an environment with mixed
qualified materials. Thus the
basically question on online task-based writing is how to integrate online
acquisition with offline learning, how to provide enough and appropriate
instruction in online writing. The
computer eventually cannot take the place of teachers. It is a media that should be structured
in courses.
The design task-based writing in Tsinghua
International English course is a design task-based web project for intermediate
adult English learners in Tourism in an Intensive English course held at School
of Continuing Education, Tsinghua University. It aims to let students acquire
English writing by using it to write a homepage providing information on a city
which they know something about and participate a discussion forum. In order to
avoid the weakness of EnglishNet Project, the Tsinghua design task-based
writing put more attention on interactive writing and structure the guided and
online learning on face-to-face classes.
The task in the design task-based writing is to design
a team homepage as well as personal homepages. Personal homepage is to write an
article about the city in terms of personal experiences and interesting things
and travel tips. Based on personal homepage, students are required to make a
team homepage which not only contains explanations and introduction, but are
also provides practical and argumentive questions and answers which tourists
and tour guides may face in their real life. Moreover, to encourage more
interactive writing, students post and participate their questions in the forum
on the homepage of Tsinghua International English Training Center as well as
other famous English-learning websites as students’ forums on Travel in Dave’s
ESL Café
(http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/student) and authentic travelers’
discussion board—Flyertalk (http://www.flyertalk.com), etc.
The aim of the stage of personal homepage writing is
to provide more guided learning at the beginning. During this period the online
course named Tsinghua International English of General English level 3[1]
is adopted which is a comprehensive online communication English learning
course. It contains audio and written text for intensive online learning,
aiming to provide more travel related input as well as joint construction of English
practice. As students are in
intermediate level, instead of leaving them to do all the web-searching alone,
teachers may also name some websites on traveling besides online text, helping
students acquire the style of online writing.
By online forum on the website of courses, students
can have a brainstorm before writing, share their experience on making homepage
and post their writing on discussion board to have teachers’ guided peer review
after writing, which make full use of online discussion board to encourage
interactive writing exchanges among students. It also fosters the sense of
cooperation since students should relate their personal homepage with team
homepage being made latter.
Besides it, homepage making in the English course is simple and easy to
deal with, so students can get some ideas of publishing online without
experiencing the frustration of getting to know many softwares and cookies at
the beginning. These homepages will be published on the website of Tsinghua
Interntional English where EFL/ESL students around the world may read it, and
it’s for sure some of them will be interested in traveling.
In the process of making team homepage, students are
encouraged to think both critically and from real tourists or tour guide’s
view, since response from authentic readers are encouraged. Thus, the topics
coming from their real experience as most of students are tour guides, or from
the frequent asked questions on yahoo.com and other travel related-website
should be carefully selected. Instead of simply linking their personal homepage
together, students have to find a good way of merging their homepages to be
more attractive. These processes
again can be supported by online discussion board.
Not only waiting for others response, students also
surf other websites as students’ forums on Travel in Dave’s ESL Café and authentic travelers’ discussion
board—Flyertalk, etc. They can participate a real discussion and provide help
and link to their team homepage for more response from authentic readers.
In short, the
Internet can be used in different ways to facilitate different types of
task-based writing. The usage of
the Internet is various according to the features of the task and
collaboration, and to students’ needs and instruction goal. Eventually, it provides enhanced social
interaction and context for more efficient writing. Thus online writing does not stress on what is the unique function
of the Internet, instead it is stresses on how to use these new features and to
integrate them to enhance existing teaching and learning. The Internet is basically a media which
can both enhance and shape teaching and learning process.
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[1] Tesinghua International English of General English is a communicative online English course. In chapter 5, level 3, the topic focuses on traveling which offering several audio and written text on introduction of an interesting places, describing a traveling experience, online authentic online reading enabled by linking to a traveling website, and grammatical focuses based on text.