Training or reflective practice for language teachers on textchat: Benefits of using interactional analysis tools on structured corpus

Résumé En

A LETEC (LEarning and TEaching Corpus) corpus assembles in a structured way data which reflects the activity of participants during the online course (learners, teachers, natives, etc.) and also the pedagogical settings (such as the learning design), and, wherever applicable, the research protocol (design and output such as questionnaires, interviews, etc.). We would like to present one possible application of LETEC to teacher education with a focus on a specific communication tool, namely textchat. We analysed textchat sessions with the freeware Tatiana designed by researchers from the CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) community (Dyke et al., 2009). We will first show the characteristics of the structured corpus by comparing it to its original corpus in text format. Then we will explain the procedure we followed to use the structured corpus in association with the target trace analysis tool. Through quantitative and qualitative analyses, we will exemplify certain interactional features of the corpus. This study will describe how foreign language teachers who are interested in text chat activities may use trace analysis software to analyze and then build upon their own activities in order to foster the learner interactions using chat tools.