A Case Study on Written Lang uage Use and Interactions in...

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영어교육 62권 2호 2007년 여름

A Case Study on Written Language Use and Interactions in Dialogue Journals∗

Jeong-Won Lee (Chungnam National University)

Lee, Jeong-Won. (2007). A case study on written language use and interactions in dialogue journals. English Teaching, 62(2), 79-100.

This study examined the differences of the characteristics of language use and interactions in dialogue journal writing depending upon the EFL learners’ English writing proficiency. Participants were two pairs of four female college students (two in a pair each) who enrolled in an English writing course: one in the advanced level, two in the intermediate level, and the last in the high beginning level. Data of interactive dialogue journal exchanges were collected for about three month. The analyses provided support to the research hypothesis that the EFL students’ language use and interactions in dialogue journal writing were different depending upon their English writing proficiency. Accordingly, the result suggests that these written conversations performed in the dialogue journals may not only function as language learning opportunities, but provide an opportunity to pause for thought as for the characteristics of a natural, interactive written language acquisition process.

I. INTRODUCTION What do you think is the most difficult skill for students especially in the EFL context

to improve? It is for sure that you will have no hesitation in responding to the question with the answer of ‘writing’ whatever reasons you may bring. Oryang Kwon’s (2005) comparative study of high school students’ English proficiency across the three East Asian countries of Korea, China, and Japan reports that the students fall much shorter of English writing proficiency than their proficiency in the other three language skills, with Korean students almost twice lower than those of the other two countries.

Writing is one of the most difficult skills not only to learn but to teach. Teaching writing typically entails a teacher’s effortful unidirectional comments or isolated feedback on

∗ This work was supported by Chungnam National University Research Fund in 2005.

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students’ writing through limited interactions between the teacher and his/her students. Nevertheless, teachers still wonder how and what to help the learners construct their writing proficiency, which will, in turn, contribute to overall L2 learning in the long run.

Recently, some researchers have made an attempt to look at the issue of feedback in L2 learning from a different perspective of the sociocultural theory of learning (Adair-Hauck & Donato, 1994; Ahmed, 1994; Aljaafreh & Lantolf, 1994; Nassaji & Swain, 2000; Swain, 1997). Given the assumption that this theoretical framework can shed light on the L2 learning process, the Vygotskian sociocultural perspective of knowledge construction through a process of collaboration, interaction, and communication among learners in social settings may provide significant insights into the understanding of L2 writing.

One of the Vygotskian frameworks that catches attention with reference to L2 writing process is the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD), “the distance between the actual developmental level as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers [emphasis added]” (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 86). In contrast with his original concept, the ZPD is now taken not as a fixed trait of the learner but as an emergent and open-ended one that unfolds through interaction and expands the potential for learning by providing opportunities which are not considered in the earlier concept (Wells, 1998).

For learning to take place within the learners’ ZPD, guided support is required to be provided to the less knowledgeable partner (the novice) as s/he collaborates with a more knowledgeable one (the expert). It is known as scaffolding, referring to “situation where a knowledgeable participant can create supportive conditions in which the novice can participate and extend his or her current skills and knowledge to higher levels of competence” (Donato, 1994, p. 40). When these concepts are applied to EFL writing process, EFL learners need to be scaffolded and supported in their complex task of improving their English writing ability as they interact with their teacher or peers.

How, then, can they be scaffolded and supported to accomplish their goal of improving their English writing proficiency in EFL context, where interactions and collaboration between the teacher and his/her learners are hard to be frequent and sufficient enough to complete the task? A handful of researchers have taken a new, insightful approach on the question by arousing their interest in dialogue journals (Allison, 1998; Flores & Garcia, 1984; Peyton 1990a; Peyton & Reed, 1990; Peyton & Staton, 1993; Staton, 1990; Staton, Shuy, Peyton, & Reed, 1988). They have showed particular interest in how ongoing dialogue journal communications progressively prompted a teacher and his/her students learning English to use writing interactively, meaningfully, and communicatively (Peyton, 1993a, 1993b; Peyton & Staton, 1993; Shuy, 1993).

In addition, considering that limiting the range of activities and focusing on practicing

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basic skills according to the EFL learners’ language competence hamper rather than promote learning and writing development (Edelsky, 1986; Franklin, 1986; Hudelson, 1989), dialogue journals are deemed as a useful tool to provide a variety of stimuli (different kinds of reading texts, content, topics, etc.) and chances to express themselves in writing on a variety of topics and for a variety of purposes in their ZPD (Johnson, 1989). That is, dialogue journals may provide rich reading and writing which enhance the language and writing abilities, and personal development of the learners participated in the interaction.

Most of the studies with respect to dialogue journals have so far focused on written interaction in the ESL setting between a teacher and his/her student(s) with different types of student populations such as students in early elementary grades (Flores & Garcia, 1984; Peyton, 1990a); deaf students (Peyton, 1990b); and talented as well as mentally retarded students (Farley, 1986; Farley & Farley, 1987). Little of the previous exploration into dialogue journal writing, however, has highlighted written interaction between peers (whether one of them is the more knowledgeable or not) especially in EFL context, in which English writing is usually considered as a fundamentally monologic, solitary activity, overlooking its continual interactive traits over time.

Therefore, before the exploration of the ZPD (a highly sophisticated concept that needs complicate lines of research) through dialogue journals in EFL context, an inquiry into what happens in the written exchanges between peers is in order. The goal of the current study is, thus, to elucidate the differences, if any, of the characteristics of language use and interactions in dialogue journal writing depending upon the EFL students’ English writing proficiency.

II. RESEARCH DESIGN

1. Participants Two pairs of students who participated in the study were selected from among a number

of pairs of EFL students who had enrolled in a one-semester intensive intermediate writing class in a university in Daejeon, Korea. They were female, native speakers of Korean, majoring in English language and literature. According to a general diagnostic test (a short essay about introducing their counterparts) administered by the researcher before the research, and the participants’ own self-assessment, one student (called Sun, hereafter) was a more proficient (advanced) English writer; another two (called Eun and Jung respectively, hereafter) were intermediate though their writing characteristics were quite different (Eun is a bit better writer than Jung); and the other was less proficient writer

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(high-beginner) (called Mi, hereafter). Pair A was composed of Sun and Eun while Pair B, Jung and Mi. The two couples agreed upon their partnership voluntarily.

They were asked to keep the dialogue journals for about three months as one of the requirements of the writing class they had been participating in. They were allowed to bring any topic for the journal entries. During the semester the researcher and the students had a few conference sessions individually or in pair to get more direct information of their writing behavior and to achieve clarification of the contents of the entries.

2. Criteria for Analyzing Language Use and Interactions in Dialogue Journals

It needs to be acknowledged that written interactions are performed in a variety of

aspects and dimensions. To observe part of them through the window of dialogue journal writing can possibly provide one of the missing pieces in the huge mosaics of the nature of written discourse. This study makes an attempt to capture some of the different characteristics of written interactions between EFL students depending upon their level of writing competency. The features consisting of the criteria for the analyses are three-fold: input features which are intrasentential in nature; interactional features which are interactively determined by the students’ contribution to the discourse; and conversation features which are a main characteristic of the discourse at the broadest level (Staton, 1993).

1) Input Features

Five components were included as follows: • Tense: ratio of present to past tense verbs with others such as present- and past-perfect

tense verbs • Length of utterances: measured by the number of words per T-unit1 • Syntactic complexity: the number of passives, embedded clauses, and negatives per

T-unit • Functional complexity: ratio of content (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, pronouns) to

function words (prepositions, auxiliary verbs, articles, conjunctions, negations, exclamations) • Vocabulary: provision of explanatory context, definition for unusual words, etc.

(the number of instances observed)

1 The T-unit is defined as “a major clause plus all subordinate clauses and non-clausal structures

attached or embedded in it” (Hunt, 1970, p. 4).


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2) Interactional Features Six components were selected as follows: • Topic marking: topics overtly manifested by paragraphing; topics articulated in the

first sentence of the paragraph; and the order of topic presentation matching the counterpart’s topic order

• Topic establishment: decomposition of topic and comment into sentences, a unique characteristic of native-speaker to non-native-speaker discourse (Long, 1980)

• Turn-taking: the number of sentences per turn • Questions: the number (and ratio) of questions over declarative sentences, and that of

yes/no and tag-questions over all questions • Repetition: in question form and in the form of direct repetition of the counterpart’s

statement • Expansion: expanding the counterpart’s writing to supply missing function words (the

number of instances observed)

3) Conversational Features Three components were involved as follows: • Language functions: the number of different functions observed in the discourse • Comments relevant to the counterpart’s topic: the number of comments over all topics • New topics referring to shared events or context: the ratio of the new topics of shared

events or context to those of not shared events or context

3. Data Analyses The data of dialogue journal exchanges between the two pairs of students—Sun

(advanced level) and Eun (intermediate level) in Pair A, and Jung (intermediate level) and Mi (high beginning level) in Pair B—were collected for about three months in a semester in 2005. Each sentence in the dialogue journal entry was segmented into T-units and sentences, tallied, coded, tabulated, and analyzed in accordance with the purposes of analysis as in the criteria mentioned above. Table 1 outlines the basic categories of discourse observed in the dialogue journals.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The two pairs of students communicated routinely over nearly three month with each

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other through written English using a variety of linguistic and functional properties to express themselves and to interpret each other. They used these written interactions as a context in which they can communicate in English, attempting to understand and appreciate each other. It is assumed that these exchanges have established a basis for mutual understanding through the ‘tool’ of language, on which a ZPD might develop, although it is beyond the scope of the current study to identify and verify the ZPD and its consequences on students’ writing samples since it is known to be constructed progressively (Nassaji & Cumming, 2000; Wertsch, 1991). For now, however, it should suffice to clarify the characteristics of discourse shared between peers in each pair to communicate through dialogue journals.

TABLE 1

Description of the Students’ Text in the Dialogue Journals Turns T-units (Sentences) Words Topics

Sun 25 353 (301) 3,034 16 Pair A Eun 25 290 (247) 2,444 15 Jung 25 279 (266) 2,732 25 Pair B Mi 25 373 (367) 2,349 24

1. Input Features

Table 2 presents the result of the analysis of input features, comparing each student’s

input to their counterparts.

1) Tense The tense feature does not vary markedly in their writing to their partners, yet shows

some contrast between two pairs. In pair B, Mi (in the lowest writing level among the four) stayed with about 60% of the use of present tense since she lacks in the consistent and accurate use of past tense.

Mi: Fortunately, I passed the camera test. So, I have a confidence. But I worried about

registration the academy. I can’t trust the director of an academy.2

Surprisingly, Sun (in the highest writing level among the four) in Pair A used present tense the most. When this was submitted to qualitative scrutiny, it turned out to come from her thoughtful consideration toward her partner. She appears to take on the teacher’s role

2 All italics found in the samples of the dialogue journal entries are added by the researcher.


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unwittingly, judging from her explicit explanations and encouraging comments. Sun: I want to talk about your new hair style because you seem very unhappy with it

while I’m very fond of it. I mean it. It does suit you well.

TABLE 2 Linguistic Input Features in Each Student’s Writing to Their Counterparts

Pair A Pair B Input Features Sun Eun Jung Mi Tense 63.67% 51.55% 52.21% 60.90% Length of Utterances 8.59 8.43 9.69 6.30 Syntactic Complexity passives 7.37% 3.79% 5.73% 1.34% embedded clauses 5.10% 6.55% 4.66% 0 negatives 21.81% 18.28% 11.11% 4.29% Functional Complexity 74.23% 75.29% 71.71% 76.20% Vocabulary 1 0 0 0

Even though Eun and Jung (both in the intermediate level of English writing ability)

used present tense at the similar rate, the qualitative difference was found that while Eun was considerably well in control of the use of past tense, Jung showed such a fluctuated pattern in the use of past tense as Mi did. Upon depicting past events, she often began with past tense, ending up with present tense.

Eun: Almost half of the mates described about my hair and the rest described me as a

outgoing and funny girl. I liked that pretty much.

Jung: It was a nice day as well as a painful day to me and mom. A working student who worked in mom’s store left a store since yesterday. So I worked from 6 o’clock till dawn. On that farticular day, a customer get in to the store without a break. At first, I am pleased to earn much money. However I lose my temper soon because I can’t take a rest for eight hours.

2) Length of Utterances

Length of utterances in dialogue journals can be considered a yardstick for measuring

the writer’s text organizing ability as well as her adaptability to her counterpart’s level of English writing proficiency. Thus it needs to be cautious to claim that the longer the length of utterances is, the more proficient the writer is (Long, 1983; Staton, 1993). However, such typical premise goes well with the Mi’s case. Her entries were full of short simple statements.

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Mi: Today, I ate a Mr. pizza. Mr. pizza is very delicious. So I like that. But I ate too much.

Jung stands in marked contrast. Though she was not the most proficient writer, she

enjoyed writing longer sentences, trying to apply to her writing the expressions taught in the class and idiomatic expressions. Nevertheless, her writing still lacked consistency and compactness in content organization.

Jung: To make matters worse, I left my submission on my desk that I had lost a great

deal of face to a professor. The other two writers (Sun and Eun) excelled in systematic deployment of their

thoughts and ideas at the appropriate length of utterances.

3) Syntactic Complexity Analyzed was the frequency of occurrence of the three main features that leads to

syntactic complexity in order to tease out the complexity of the students’ writing: passives, embedded clauses, and negatives. Mi revealed her poor control of the linguistic features with the lowest frequency in all three features with no occurrence of embedded clauses.

With passives, Jung showed quite good ability to control the constructions in accuracy and frequency, ending up with the 2nd frequent user of the construction.

Jung: As older, I am much annoyed at studying. In Eun’s writing, embedded clauses came most frequently into use. She was very good

at taking care of the construct, which made her writing more cohesive and explanatory. In the use of negatives, a pattern of variation is apparent that the occurrence was determined in order of the students’ writing proficiency. The first two frequent users (the two students in Pair A) showed a variety of usages and functions while the other two’s use of negatives was restricted to a few usages.

Eun: I think it is very hard to describe someone whom I don’t know much about. Sun: He became 100 days old. 100 days old! Isn’t it cute?

Nobody can clarify love but everybody can be in love.


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4) Functional Complexity In the ratio of content to function words, a pattern of variation is not clear that the four writers

had almost the same ratio in their journal writing. It seems caused by the students’ concentration on delivering their message to their partners in a freer written communicative context.

5) Vocabulary

Checked was the use of definitions and explanations of particular words in written

communication. It is one of the most common features in oral discourse. Only one instance was found in Sun’s writing. As mentioned in the tense feature above, she showed some degree of fine-tuning of input to her peer, which can usually be observed from native English teachers in responding to their students’ writing.

Sun: From my point of view, on the other hand, it’s all brilliant and brainy. By brainy I

mean that you have to infer or even guess to solve the mystery cases.

2. Interactional Features The second set of features to be analyzed is those which have some bearing on the

structure of the interactions observed in the journal writing. Table 3 presents the results of the analysis, comparing each student’s input to their counterparts.

TABLE 3

Interactional Features in Each Student’s Writing to Their Counterparts Pair A Pair B

Interactional Features Sun Eun Jung Mi Topic Marking

overt paragraphing 100% 70% 0% 0% topic in the first sentence 72.31% 48.94% 28.00% 16.00% topic order matching 90% 70% 50% 50%

Topic Establishment 0 0 0 0 Turn-taking (turns/sentences per turn) 25/12.04 25/9.88 25/10.64 25/14.68

Questions 34 (11.30%) 12 (4.86%) 14 (5.26%) 12 (3.27%) yes-no questions 22 (64.71%) 3 (25%) 10 (71.43%) 7 (58.33%) tag-questions 6 (17.65%) 0 0 1 (8.33)

Repetition 0 0 0 0 Expansion 2 0 0 0

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1) Topic Marking The first step for effective written communication consists in having writers pay careful

attention to the convention of topic marking. To determine the writers’ ability to deal with this basic interactional axiom in dialogue journal writing, three aspects of topic marking were analyzed: overt paragraphing, stating topics overtly in the first sentence of the paragraph, and matching the topic order of their responses to the order in which their partner presented those topics. As shown in Table 3, the three aspects representing the feature of topic marking were determined in order of the students’ writing proficiency.

Sun in Pair A, the most proficient writer, surpassed the other three students in these three aspects. She never fails to separate all of her topics clearly even in a paragraph only with two or three sentences as in the example below:

Sun: I hate climbing mountain! You have to climb down once you reach the top of

mountain. What is that?

However, Jung and Mi didn’t show any evidence that they know how to make and separate topics although Jung, in the intermediate writing level, was quite fluent in organizing the content of her stories.

With the aspect of topic in the first sentence, Sun outperformed other students again though she was not as perfect in control of the aspect as native English teachers are. Taking it into consideration that she is not a native English writer and that the task of expressing and sharing her idea with her peer in the journal may require a narrative approach,3 72.31% should not be underestimated.

She also exerted herself to match the topics in her response to those brought up by her partner. According to Staton et al.’s (1988) observation, even native English writers often stick to the recency principle of responding first to the last mentioned topic. Thus it can be assumed that she is conscious of the need to be careful about the order of responding to topics. In the interactional feature, it is clearly shown that she tried hard to make the careful adaptations in her discourse to heighten her counterpart’s comprehensibility.

As for topic order matching, Eun looks good enough, considering her level of writing ability. A peculiar characteristic of Jung and Mi in this aspect is that they responded to the topics stated by their partners mostly with two remarks or three at the most before they proceed to tell their own stories. They don’t look much interactive in working on the task of keeping dialogue journal.

3 In this approach, the writer usually concentrates on the flow of the story s/he wants to convey to

his/her reader without specific identification of the topic in the paragraph (Bander, 1978).


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Mi: Nice plan. I envy you. I want to go the Daejeon zoo. I worried about my campus life. Jung: I believe you will be a flight-attendant. I want you get courage. Fighting! Do you

know that I made up my mind to do a declaration of love?

2) Topic Establishment An analysis was performed to see if there is any tendency of students’ adaptability to

their counterparts’ writing proficiency by decomposing the initial statements into two sentences, one stating just the topic and the next offering a comment or elaboration on that topic. Unfortunately, no instance was observed, not even from Sun, although it is one of the features found so often in interaction between a teacher and his/her students. It might come from the fact that the topics brought up in their journal entries are not so much academic or professional ones as daily routines and events, and that the students in each pair are such close friends that they can request for clarification about any entry unclear in the journal and respond to it in oral interaction.

3) Turn-taking

It is usual in everyday conversation setting that the proficient speaker (or writer) produce

more language than her less proficient interlocutor. In case of the dialogue journals, however, numerical equality of turn taking is guaranteed since the journal is regularly exchanged back and forth, which was proven in the current study, too. Despite the same number of turn-taking, according to the examination of the relative length of turns based on the number of sentences in each turn, the amount of writing showed differences depending upon the students’ writing proficiency and/or personal writing style.

An analysis of the length of turns measured by the number of sentences in a turn reveals an interesting pattern in a quantitative aspect. Mi, the least proficient writer, responded longer than any other students (14.68 sentences a turn), even outdoing Sun, the most proficient writer. In a qualitative aspect, however, the two writers stand in marked contrast that Mi’s sentences are comprised chiefly of simple sentences, which increases the total number of sentences per turn. Her case looks determined not by the variety of her interactional versatility, an intrinsic and automatic part of the dialogue journal practice, but by her lack of diversity in syntactic organization. On the other hand, Sun reveals her ability in elaborating her responses properly to her partner’s topics, exerting her good command of English, which would probably result in strengthening of her partner’s greater involvement in the written exchanges.

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Mi: Today I ate a Mr. pizza. Mr. pizza is very delicious. So I like that. But I ate too much.

Sun: Only fools try to define what love is, I reckon. Nobody can clarify love but

everybody can be in love. So cheer up!

4) Questions Sun asked questions over 10% of her utterances while the other three used questions

around 5%. It points out that she uses questions to engage her partner in the discourse and to check on comprehension through confirmation questions while the others look busy delivering their message unidirectionally (in Jung and Mi’s journal entries in particular).

Sun: Do you remember my saying that I’d started reading Harry Potter V?

Taking it into account that higher proportion of questions may not facilitate comprehension but can be intimidating (Staton, 1993), Sun’s questions were properly spaced and integrated into elaborations on the topics brought up by her partner.

With the ratio of Wh- to Yes/No or Tag questions, it is said that proficient speakers use a much higher proportion of Yes/No and Tag questions when speaking with young language learners (Shuy, 1988a). It is clear that Sun sets an example of competent language user in written communication in that she used 64.71% of Yes/No questions and 17.65% of Tag questions, which amounts to 82.36% total, to help her partner engage readily in the topics she introduced and to check on her partner’s comprehension about the topics.

Eun asked only three Yes/No questions out of 12 questions in the journal entries with no Tag questions. It seems that she didn’t put her attention much on her partner’s engagement in the interaction and comprehension but on content-based elaboration about her topics as in the example below:

Eun: What kind of exercise will be fun and helpful? One interesting finding is that, while Sun’s Tag questions were appropriately and

accurately made, one and only Tag question Mi tried was not clear and inaccurate. Sun: By this I mean, people have their biorhythm, so, in turn, it’s wiser to carry on their

nature rather than imitate others, isn’t it? Mi: Oh, really? Sik-Chang San is so good, aren’t you?


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5) Repetition Repetition is one of the techniques highly used by the more competent language user

(usually teachers in classroom situation) to clarify his/her partner’s (or students’) utterances. It can be used in the form of asking questions or direct repetition of the partner’s statements. In the dialogue journal entries analyzed in the current study, none of the students asked for clarification of their partners’ statements, nor did they repeat their own statements. It may be not only because they can go back and forth the dialogue journal to clarify themselves about any uncertainties thanks to accessibility of the visible record of the written dialogue, but because the students of each pair enjoy such a close relationship with each other that they can, if need be, ask each other for help with anything uncomfortable linguistically or contextually.

6) Expansion

Expansion of the partner’s statements to supply missing function words or morphemes,

or to correct grammatical mistakes occurred two times only in Sun’s writing, in which she just provided expanded restatement in her respond to her partner’s statement with a few minor adjustments in the grammar and morpheme errors.

Eun: I tried to general perm. Sun: I’ve never tried my hair permed. Eun: I have so many homeworks. Sun: I was occupied in a mountainous pile of homework.

3. Conversational Features Finally, the dialogue journal entries were analyzed to determine the presence of the

features of good language input for good conversation. It is obviously true that conversation is usually occurred in oral communication; however, considering the conversational characteristics of written interactions in the dialogue journals, it is worthwhile enough to examine how conversational features are embedded and organized in the dialogue journal entries to promote understanding in the mode of written discourse. Table 4 presents the descriptive findings concerning the three features. For this criterion, some of Grice’s maxims for conversational cooperation (quantity and relation) were adapted as a means of ensuring that the comments are basically meaningful to the reader by referring to known physical/social contexts.

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TABLE 4 Conversational Features of Each Student’s Writing to Their Counterparts

Pair A Pair B Conversational Features Sun Eun Jung Mi Language Functions 19 15 20 19

Comments (as % of all partner topics) 93.33% (14 of 15)

75% (12 of 16)

91.67% (22 of 24)

88% (22 of 25)

New Topics (as % of all new writer topics)

83.33% (10 of 12)

53.85% (7 of 13)

44% (11 of 25)

41.67% (10 of 24)

1) Language Functions

Language functions were selected and modified for the present study based virtually on

the scheme of Shuy’s (1988b, 1993) 14 language functions, adding 9 more from Staton’s (1993) study and the analysis of the current discourse data, ending up in 23 language functions as in Table 5. Following are the instances in which the two pairs of the students use each language function in their three-month dialogue journals. Table 5 displays that the four writers use a wide variety of language functions, a necessary condition for mutually satisfying conversations. The results are presented by percentage ratios.

There were 1,295 language functions total (353 for Sun, 290 for Eun, 279 for Jung, and 373 for Mi) used by the students during the designated time period. Unlike dialogue journal writing of native English speakers in which many instances of simultaneous, multiple language functions are found within a sentence (Staton et al., 1988), few such multiple, simultaneous functions in the two pairs’ entries were found probably because they are not as competent language users as native English speakers. It appears that the task of communicating in a new language constrains the functions to a one-at-a-time sequence (Nassaji & Cumming, 2000).

An almost identical pattern was produced across the four students for the most frequently used language functions. Ranked by frequency of use in total, the top four functions (Reporting personal facts, general facts, and opinions, and Expressing wishes) accounted for 73.66% of all the instances used by them, which is appreciably different from Shuy’s (1993) results of a native English teacher’s use of language functions to her ESL students in which the four language functions (the first three language functions identified in the present study plus ‘Evaluating’) accounted for 84.2% of all the instances. Considering the difference of the combination of interaction pairs in the two studies, the different language functions reported fourth in frequency seem quite predictable.

Generally, the first three language functions (‘Reporting personal facts’ in particular) take up a large portion of speech and writing of most individuals. Such fact was held also by the result that ‘Reporting personal facts’ was used almost a half of the total instances of communication exchanges followed by 14.36% of ‘Reporting opinions.’


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TABLE 5 Percent of Language Functions Used by the Two Pairs of the Students

Pair A Pair B Language Functions Sun Eun Jung Mi

Total

Reporting personal facts 143 129 120 150 542 Reporting general facts 48 (13.60) 36 (12.41) 35 (12.54) 31 (8.31) 150 Reporting opinions 40 (11.33) 48 (16.55) 27 (9.68) 71 (19.03) 186 Requesting personal info. 13 (3.68) 1 (0.34) 1 (0.36) 2 (0.54) 17 (1.31) Requesting academic info. 2 (0.57) 1 (0.34) 1 (0.36) 0 4 (0.31) Requesting general info. 4 (1.13) 3 (1.03) 1 (0.36) 1 (0.27) 9 (0.69) Requesting opinion 0 0 2 (0.72) 5 (1.34) 7 (0.54) Requesting clarification 0 0 0 0 0 Thanking 1 (0.28) 4 (1.38) 3 (1.08) 0 8 (0.62) Evaluating 26 (7.37) 12 (4.14) 4 (1.43) 15 (4.02) 57 (4.40) Predicting 1 (0.28) 0 1 (0.36) 2 (0.54) 4 (0.31) Complaining 1 (0.28) 3 (1.03) 1 (0.36) 0 5 (0.39) Apologizing 5 (1.42) 0 0 1 (0.27) 6 (0.46) Giving Directives 9 (2.55) 5 (1.72) 10 (3.58) 9 (2.41) 33 (2.55) Offering sympathy 1 (0.28) 2 (0.69) 5 (1.79) 8 (2.14) 16 (1.24) Promising 2 (0.57) 3 (1.03) 5 (1.79) 4 (1.07) 14 (1.08) Expressing wishes 15 (4.25) 19 (6.55) 16 (5.73) 26 (6.97) 76 (5.87) Encouraging 13 (3.68) 1 (0.34) 6 (2.15) 10 (2.68) 30 (2.32) Making jokes 0 0 1 (0.36) 1 (0.27) 2 (0.15) Confirming 12 (3.40) 0 7 (2.51) 8 (2.14) 27 (2.08) Regreting 2 (0.57) 0 3 (1.08) 3 (0.80) 8 (0.62) Celebrating 1 (0.28) 1 (0.34) 0 3 (0.80) 5 (0.39) Greeting 0 0 2 (0.72) 17 (19.03) 19 (1.47) Total 353 (100) 290 (100) 279 (100) 373 (100) 1,295

Still, the different frequency of the use of language functions can be found in one aspect

or another. The significance of such differences may be explained by several factors such as their English writing ability, academic ability, psychological adjustment, topics of discussion, etc. Here found is a difference of the order of the language functions in the second and third frequency in occurrence that each writer used in dialogue journal entries.

Sun in Pair A and Jung in Pair B, who are better at writing proficiency than their counterparts respectively, reported ‘Reporting general facts’ as the second most frequently used language function, whereas Eun in Pair A and Mi in Pair B, ‘Reporting opinions.’ It can be inferred that the two proficient writers in each pair allowed space for explanations of general facts shared by a large group of people in order to enhance their partners’ understanding of them and engagement in exchanges. On the other hand, Eun and Mi reported ‘Reporting opinions’ more frequently than Sun and Jung did, the function that implies an expression of fairly subjective feeling or preference centering on personal interests.

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One thing worth mentioning here is that Sun used ‘Evaluating’ more frequently than the other three writers. In contrast to the language function of ‘Reporting opinions,’ a rather subjective category, ‘Evaluating’ implies comprehensive perception and understanding based on actual, objective standards or norms. Sun appears to engage the function more likely to contribute to active construction of collaborative learning environment between her and her counterpart.

In addition, she reveals her potential role of a competent peer or even a teacher from the sociocultural perspective (Vygotsky, 1978) in that, unlike the other three writers, she requested some more personal information to show her careful interest in her partner’s matters of concern even though they had been known each other for a couple of years as classmates. By this endeavor, Sun seems to make an attempt to provide her partner, Eun, with a stepping stone on which Eun can build up her utterances.

Sun: Oh, “Happy birthday.” Did you get lots of presents? Did you get what you wanted? Sun also used the language function of ‘Encouraging’ most frequently among the four

participants. Sun: I currently read the comic books called “Death North” and simply thrilled. It’s out

of imaginary! Unpredictable, exciting, and extremely brainy. Have it a go when you have a time.

In such prominent performances in the use of language functions, it appears that Sun

tries to create an intimate atmosphere where she can build rapport with Eun and thus elicit Eun’s active participation in dialogue journal communication.

Another finding is that no one asked for clarification of her partner’s statements. As discussed in one of the interactional features, it may be not only because students can go back and forth the dialogue journal to clarify themselves about any uncertainties due to accessibility of the visible record of the written dialogue, but because the students of each pair enjoy such a close relationship with each other that they can, if need be, ask each other for help with anything uncomfortable linguistically or contextually.

Of interest is that Mi stands in marked contrast in the use of ‘Greeting,’ the second most frequently used language function in her total use of language functions. While the two students in Pair A did not report the language function at all and Jung reported just a couple of the use of it, she usually ended her dialogue entries with the habitual greeting phrases as in the below example:

Mi: I have to go to the bed. Good night. See you tomorrow.


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2) Comments Relevant to the Partner’s Topic To sustain a good conversation in the verbal or written fashion, it is generally required

for speakers (or writers) to make their comments relevant to their counterparts’ topics. The more proficient students in each pair (Sun and Jung) made their comments on a higher percentage of their partners’ topics: 93.33% and 91.67% respectively. In contrast, a little lower percentage of the topics of the two less proficient students (than their counterparts) was comments on their partners’ topics. As mentioned elsewhere in the previous analyses that they are close classmates, the students were quite attentive to their peers’ topics, readily responding to them. Substantially, however, Jung’s and Mi’s comments on each other’s topics didn’t come up to the interaction level of Sun and Eun that Jung and Mi responded perfunctorily to the topics stated by their partners mostly with a few sentences before they proceed to tell their stories.

Jung: Do you remember that you promised to buy a duck for me? I want you will be a

man of your word. (comments on Mi’s topic) I visited a cousin’s house which was remodeled last month.

Mi: I feeled the fact, too. Do our best. (comments on Jung’s topic) Today is tree planting day.

3) New Topics Referring to Shared Events or Context By and large, good writers introduce new topics, considering the prospective readers’

understanding of what is being said. For communication, whether by speech or by writing, to be meaningful and comprehensible, the establishment of shared context is highly required. Their capability of introducing new topics referring to shared events or context was determined in order of their writing proficiency. Sun was quite good at anchoring her topics to Eun’s social and physical context. Jung and Mi were bent on reporting their own experiences or events occurred to them.

IV. CONCLUSION The current study tried to grasp the characteristics of written interactions between two

EFL students in the two pairs (four in total) observed in dialogue journal writing depending upon the level of their English writing proficiency. The four students demonstrated some of the similarities and differences in accordance with the features examined for analysis.

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The analysis of linguistic features found in discourse exchanges falls seemingly short of emerging any significant, systematic variation of language usage in journal writings depending upon the writers’ level of proficiency. After probing deep into the exchanges, however, one feature was found to be noteworthy that Sun provided the definition of a seemingly difficult word that she introduced in her statements, which is often found in the native English teacher’s utterances (Long, 1983).

In contrast to the findings from the analyses of linguistic features, somewhat more systematic, consistent variation was identified in the interactional features depending upon the students’ English writing proficiency. Sun’s adaptability of her writing to her counterpart’s degree of English writing proficiency was not explicitly exposed in linguistic features due to their perfunctory nature. In the interactional features, on the other hand, the main attribute is to have performatives that directly act on readers or request action from them. It seems that the higher level of English writing proficiency and a great amount of writing experiences allow Sun to secure mental capacity enough to concentrate on the higher-order skill of interaction features (McLaughlin, 1987, 1990). One more condition of her fulfillment as a competent peer who can scaffold her partner’s language use and interaction may come from her intention to communicate, which motivates her innate capacity to generate ‘comprehensible input’ (Krashen, 1981) tuned to the comprehension level of her counterpart.

In stark contrast, Jung, who was expected to assume the role of a knowledgeable peer (or even a teacher) in written discourse exchanges with her less proficient peer, failed to demonstrate the same natural adaptations as Sun did partly because of her lack of control over linguistic properties. That reminds us of the notion of a threshold level of language proficiency proposed by Cummins (1979) and proven by Lee, Jeong-Won and Schallert (1997). The main idea underlying the concept is that EFL readers will not be able to read effectively until they develop some proficiency in the target language. The findings of the current study present evidence, then, that the threshold hypothesis may possibly be applied to EFL writing as well as reading. In consequence, availability of the same kind of native speakers’ innate communicative competence that enables them to adapt their language to nonnative speakers’ proficiency level in ‘foreigner talk’ (Ferguston, 1975) may depend, to some extent, upon the degree of EFL students’ linguistic proficiency in written interaction.

In the last features of analysis, the two more competent writers (Sun in Pair A and Jung in Pair B) showed a rather systematic variation in dealing with conversational input features in dialogue journals, though some significant differences in quality of their performance were found in the two writers’ performance that might result from the differences of their linguistic ability and writing style. Especially the features of language functions and comments relevant to their partners’ topics drop a mild hint that they demonstrate their innate capability for adaptations of their conversational input to make


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their partners more engaged in the written interactions. With an eye to all these findings from the present study, speculative though, we can

reach the conclusion that the EFL students’ language use and interactions in dialogue journal writing can be different depending upon their English writing proficiency, and that these written conversations performed in the dialogue journals may not only function as language learning opportunities, but provide an opportunity to pause for thought as for the characteristics of a natural, interactive written language acquisition process.

Lastly, the findings should be treated with a good deal of caution. It was a case study only with the two pairs of the students, aimed at identifying the characteristics of written interactions in dialogue journal entries before conducting more elaborated research of this sort in future. One problem area concerns the number of the subjects participated in the study. Although it is admitted that the case study usually resorts to a small number of participants, the fact per se can reduce the study into a pilot-level one conducted typically before large-scale, comprehensive research. A second point concerns the criteria employed for analysis of the data. There can be more or other criteria appropriate for the analysis. Taking it into account, however, that the study on the aspects of written interactions in dialogue journal is in its infancy, the attempt made in the current study seems good enough to provide a stepping stone on which more comprehensive research can flourish. Finally, the data were analyzed solely by the author, who has been trained for so long in such analysis, though, so that the interpretation of the results should be treated with caution.

It is true that much remains to be studied in the area of language use and interactions in written discourse. Nevertheless, the findings in the study provide a starting point of probing deep into the complicated area of written discourse processes. Assuredly, some more such attempts and insights still need to be gleaned from varying approaches of research, and the current study is expected to hopefully serve the purpose.

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Applicable levels: secondary education, college education Key words: written interactions, dialogue journal, case study Jeong-Won Lee Dept. of English Language and Literature Chungnam National University 220 Gung-dong, Yuseong-gu Daejeon 305-764, Korea Email: [email protected] Received in February, 2007 Reviewed in March, 2007 Revised version received in May, 2007

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