Language communities on the web: creating authentic writing opportunities in post-secondary 2010 ETUG Spring Workshop - presentation by Catherine Caws, University of Victoria Workshop Descriptions: http://etug.ca/?page_id=835

2. Language Communities:
creating authentic writing
opportunities
Catherine Caws
Department of French
University of Victoria
ETUG Spring Workshop 2010

3. Sapir (1949) insisted on the strong relationship
between culture and languages and argued that
linguists must "become increasingly concerned
with the many anthropological, sociological, and
psychological problems which invade the field
of language" (p. 77).

4. Writing in 2010?
Education is entering a particularly critical stage that
is marked by an urgent need to examine the role that
digitally mediated, collaborative tools play, not only as
learning tools, but as authentic means of
communication and relationship building” (Sykes et al,
2008, p. 528)

5. Redefining writing in a L2 as a
true communicative genre
seeing reading and writing literacy as “characteristic of a
social group’s practices rather than the cognitive
competence of a single individual” (Locke 2004, p.13)
communication is viewed both as a form of knowledge
transmission and information negotiation, and a
discursive practice within a community in which
individuals feel engaged in order to achieve trust as
much as truth (Kramsch & Thorne, 2002).

6. Engaging learners/writers
inout output
interaction
fan fiction: http://www.fanfiction.net/ constructivism
socio-cultural
a space for thought experimentation and literacy
practice
collaborative enterprise in writing with fast
review, feed-back and constructive criticism
genre, rating, editing, multi-lingual
http://www.fanfic-fr.net/

7. Calling on several theories
of learning
✓ form-focused instruction (FFI)
✓ constructivism
✓ socio-cultural theory (Vygotsky’s ZDP)
✓ activity theory (Engeström, Lantolf & Thorne, Blin)
...it is the activity and significance that shape the
individuals’ orientation to learn or not ...(Lantolf &
Pavlenko, 2001, p.148)
attention to form will work most effectively for acqui-
sition if it occurs in the context of meaning-focused
communication (Long, 1988, 1991; Ellis, 2001)

8. looking at writing (i.e. a text) as a product and a
process (Halliday & Hasan, 1985)
is there a transfer of
hybrid language from one
language to the other
(see Thorne 2008
melding of textual and
conversational style)
qualitative based research to study interventions
and learners’ response to them

9. Sample of tools
creating authentic writing spaces to allow
individuals to express themselves in words
and also through other communicative
genre
allowing individuals to become part of a
writing communities, comment each other
texts, edit each pother, and thus exploit
ands explore the content as much as the
form Wikis <pbworks.com>
Blogs <blogger.com>
Discussions forums in Moodle
<uvic.moodle.com>
Delicious, Twitter, ...

10. linguistic
engagement
linguistic !
analysis!
use of meta-!
language!
meta-cognitive !
skills!

12. Thank you
Catherine Caws
ccaws@uvic.ca