Joint Construction in the SLATE Project

This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 AUTHOR ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT Title: Joint Construction in the SLATE project Authors: Shoshana Dreyfus & Lucy Macnaught Doi: https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v7i1-3.77 Journal webpage link: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 _____________________________________________________________________ Cite as: Dreyfus, S. & Macnaught, L. (2013). Joint Construction in the SLATE project. Journal of Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 7(1-3), 77–99. doi: 10.1558/lhs.v7i1-3.77 _____________________________________________________________________ Related papers: Dreyfus, S., Macnaught, L. & Humphrey, S. (2011). Understanding Joint Construction in the Tertiary Context, Journal of Linguistics and the Human Sciences, 4(2),135-160. doi: 10.1558/lhs.v4i2.135 Humphrey, S. & Macnaught, L. (2011). Revisiting Joint Construction in the Tertiary context, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 34(1), 98-114. Retrieved from: http://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=729761300475762;res=IELHSS Macnaught, L. (2018). Multimodal Metalanguage. In H. de Silva Joyce & S. Feez (Eds.), Multimodality across classrooms: Learning about and through different modalities. (pp. 144–160). NY: Routledge. 1 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 Joint Construction in the SLATE project Shoshana Dreyfus and Lucy Macnaught Abstract This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) project. In particu- lar, this paper focuses on the Joint Construction step of the Teaching Learning Cycle (Rothery, 1994; Martin this volume). Through wholetext genre analysis (Martin and Rose, 2008), we will describe how the step of Joint Construction was adapted to an online learning context, in order to support the writing development of undergradu- ate applied linguistics students at the City University of Hong Kong. Our findings highlight that during online Joint Construction lessons, students were given explicit feedback and encouraged to seek clarification, raise queries, recast original contribu- tions and respond to each other’s suggestions. These findings contribute to our under- standing of interaction that targets the shared negotiation of meaning, and address the on-going challenge of developing pedagogic exchanges which offer explicit and effective support to students’ writing development. 1. Introduction This paper concerns pedagogical approaches to literacy implemented in the Scaffolding Literacy in Academic and Tertiary Environments (SLATE) project. In particular, this paper focuses on the Joint Construction step of the curriculum macro-genre called the Teaching Learning Cycle (Rothery, 1994; Martin this volume). The paper describes how the SLATE project conceptu-alized and developed the step of Joint Construction for online learning, with particular focus on how this step was applied in the linguistics programme at the City University of Hong Kong (hereafter CityU). Whilst typically used in face-to-face classroom environments, the SLATE project provided the unique opportunity to trial Joint Construction in a virtual classroom. This paper reports on three aspects of this adaptation: the unfolding of online Joint Construction with regards to its genre staging; the kinds of meanings that were targeted in teacher-student interaction; and differences between the kind of literacy support afforded by Joint Construction compared to other steps in the Teaching Learning Cycle (e.g. in this volume see Humphrey and Hao for Deconstruction, and Mahboob and Yilmaz for written feedback which supports Independent Construction). These foci are foregrounded in order to better understand the unique interactive guidance that has the potential to occur in the Joint Construction step of the Teaching Learning Cycle. 2. Joint Construction as part of a curriculum macro-genre The Teaching and Learning Cycle (Rothery, 1994) is a curriculum macro- genre that is design to support learners’ literacy development. It consists of three main steps: Deconstruction, Joint Construction and Independent Construction. The cycle is classified as a curriculum macro-genre (Christie, 2002) because each of these main steps is an elemental genre which unfolds with its own structure (Martin and Dreyfus, forthcoming). Historically, the Teaching and Learning Cycle (TLC) has been used to support key written genres that students need to develop in institutionalized learning contexts (see Martin, 2009; Martin, this volume). A central principle is that the TLC anticipates language that learners need to develop in their writing by providing explicit expert guidance prior to writing independently. Support is then gradually reduced as students deepen their understanding of the writing task. 2 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 Following Deconstruction, which focuses on the analysis and recognition of key stages and linguistic features of model texts, Joint Construction involves teacher-led collaborative writing. In this stage, teachers interactively guide students in the production of a target text, or part of a text. The new text that the teacher and students collaboratively construct is of the same genre as the model text/s, but there is often a shift in field, i.e. content, or subject matter. The goal of Joint Construction is to then carry over shared under- standings, which have been developed in Deconstruction, to produce a text that is of a higher level than students could independently produce at that point in their development. To prepare students for successful independent writing, in Joint Construction, teachers use their expert knowledge of texts to carefully mediate students’ contributions and provide supportive explicit feedback (Dreyfus et al., 2011; Humphrey and Macnaught, 2011). As Section 7 of this paper will explore, the negotiation of new meaning-making in Joint Construction frequently involves variation in standard teacher-dominated pedagogic exchanges. Over the past several decades, much research has illuminated the on-going prevalence of what Sinclair and Coulthard (1975) and Mehan (1979) identified as tripartite Initiation-Response-Feedback (IRF) or Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences (see the discussions in Edwards and Westgate, 1987; Tharp and Gallimore, 1991; Nystrand and Gamoran, 1991; van Lier, 1996; Nystrand,1997; Wells, 1999; Nassaji and Wells, 2000; Christie, 2002; Rose, 2004, 2005; Gibbons, 2006, 2009). One key criticism of these truncated sequences is that, in some contexts, they can limit learning because student responses are often single words or phrases. After a student responds, the following move by the teacher to then provide evaluative feedback is seen as inhibiting opportunities for more elaborate responses from students, or responses where students’ own ideas or questions can be explored (Schleppegrell, 2004). While not the main focus of this paper, one approach to the modification of IRF talk-patterns has been to design classroom micro-interaction. This is evident in Rose’s (2005) development of the TLC which uses a designed interaction sequence to support the reading and rewriting of challenging texts (see Rose, 2005; Martin, 2006; Martin and Rose, 2007; Rose and Martin, 2012). As yet ,the potential of designed interaction during Joint Construction has not been fully explored (see Martin and Dreyfus, forthcoming, for suggestive work in this area). In sum, the step of Joint Construction provides a space where students receive explicit guidance and have the opportunity to initiate interaction as questions arise. It provides a crucial intermediate link for students between the recognition of language patterns, which are explored in Deconstruction, and the reproduction of similar patterns in independent writing. As this paper will discuss, Joint Construction was added to the embedded literacy support in the SLATE project, because interactive support was seen as particularly relevant for international students who are challenged with the discipline-specific literacy demands in their chosen tertiary studies. To support students with discipline-specific literacy, this paper will exemplify how, through online Joint Construction lessons, students were encouraged to seek clarification, raise queries, recast original contributions and respond to each other’s suggestions. In this sense, interaction during Joint Construction is neither teacher-centred, nor learner-centred. Instead, interaction is centred on the shared negotiation of meaning-making in specific contexts of use. 3. The centrality of interaction in literacy support The central role of interaction in the design of the Teaching Learning Cycle (TLC) is inspired by longitudinal studies of parent-child interaction and by consideration of how supportive text production can be enacted in classrooms (Martin, 2009). Of particular influence is the work of Painter (1985, 1993, 1999, 2000) who explores the way many parents intuitively provide high-level language assistance while children are learning their mother tongue. Such support includes: modelling new language; providing the opportunity to display new knowledge; offering encouragement and praise; interpreting their understand- ing back to the child for the child to confirm or clarify; negotiating new meaning until 3 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 shared understanding is reached; and extending children’s responses so that language support is always just ahead of what children can currently independently produce. Based on this analysis of language development, Painter reasons that it ‘makes sense’ to devise writing tasks that have an ‘interactional basis’, rather than interacting after the child has completed the task (1986: 82). In the TLC, this emphasis on providing intensive support at the time of text production involves a more specific interpretation of the much used term ‘scaffolding’. Originally introduced by Wood et al. (1976), the term scaffolding describes instructional support where learners ‘carry out new tasks while learning strategies and patterns that will eventually make it possible to carry out similar tasks without external support’ (Applebee and Langer, 1983: 169). In particular, Mariani’s (1997) ‘High Challenge, High Support’ conceptualization of scaffolding has been of influence on scholars working with Systemic Functional Linguistics and second language development (see Hammond and Gibbons, 2001). Mariani’s conceptualization of scaffolding promotes a future- oriented trajectory of language development which is accompanied by substantial teacher support. In relation to the enactment of the TLC, the sequence of ‘high support’ matters: instead of exclusively providing retrospective feedback, the modelling of target texts anticipates language patterns students need to develop and ways of organizing texts which students are not familiar with; similarly, the interactive support during Joint Construction draws on these newly developed understandings of the target text. To encapsulate the way these principles are incorporated in the TLC design, Sydney scholars have coined the phrase ‘guidance through interaction in the context of shared experience’ (Martin, 1999). Previous studies of Joint Construction While the rationale for providing literacy support at the time of text production is well articulated in the genre pedagogy literature (see Martin, 1999; Rose, 2005; Martin and Rose, 2007; Rose and Martin, 2012), educational linguists working with tertiary students have noted that there is little research to guide teachers in the enactment of Joint Construction with advanced language learners (Humphrey and Macnaught, 2011). Studies that have begun to explore the unfolding of Joint Construction in the classroom have focused on genre staging and micro-interactions between teachers and students. This research will be briefly discussed below. In terms of genre staging, Humphrey and Macnaught (2011) have adapted Hunt’s (1991, 1994) genre analysis of Joint Construction with primary school students to the pre-tertiary and tertiary context. As Figure 1 shows, their analysis identifies Joint Construction as its own genre, with three main stages of Bridging, Text Negotiation and Review. 4 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 Figure 1: Stages in Joint Construction (Humphrey & Macnaught 2011) The Bridging stage is where the teacher relates understandings built in prior text analysis to the new text the class is going to collaboratively construct. This is achieved by revisiting key aspects of field (or content) and reiterating important understandings about key linguistic patterns of the target genre. The Bridging stage may also have a planning function where ideas are brainstormed, organized into taxonomies, and selected for paragraph development. The second stage, Text Negotiation, involves teachers and students negotiating and then scribing specific language choices onto a whiteboard, smartboard or projected screen. In this stage, the teacher invites or solicits contributions from students, which are then mediated by the teacher or modified by other students before the final wording is scribed. Importantly, students have the opportunity to ask questions, seek clarification, and respectfully challenge each other’s suggestions. As instances of language use are negotiated between the teacher and students, the pedagogical aim is for meanings to ‘transcend the text’ (Martin 2006:13), i.e., to extract portable understandings to use appropriately in other texts. Further analysis of Text Negotiation has identified that the interaction in this stage consists of at least two iterative sub-phases of ‘create’ and ‘reflect’. These sub-phases can occur during the collaborative negotiation of individual words, word groups or sentences. (See Dreyfus, et al., 2011 and Martin & Dreyfus, forthcoming for description of more delicate units of meaning in this stage.) The third and final stage, Review, involves collaborative revision of what has been written. Together, the teacher and students read over the jointly constructed text to discuss what has been written and edit. Importantly, this stage provides the opportunity for students to raise any remaining queries and for the teacher to further emphasize portable understandings that students need to carry over to their independent writing. 5 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 In terms of micro-interactions during the Text Negotiation stage of Joint Construction, both Hunt (1991) and Dreyfus, et al., (2011) have observed that teachers employ a variety of solicitation strategies - from less to more explicit - depending on students’ needs. Two main findings from both these studies, which are consistent across primary, pre-tertiary and tertiary contexts, include: teachers changing the type of initiation move when students are struggling, e.g., from an open question to a statement about what is required; and the gradual use of more specific wording in elicitations to help students come up with suggestions, e.g., using a more complex nominal group to add information and provide a clue. Additionally, in the pre-tertiary and tertiary contexts, it has been noted that teachers frequently share reasoning behind language choices and explore alternatives. For students for whom English is a second or additional language, such as those participating in the SLATE project, the exploration of alternate linguistic resources is key to avoiding plagiarism of language used in the model and source texts (Humphrey & Macnaught 2011). While the TLC provides planned cycles of literacy support, there is also room for moment-by-moment literacy support. This is particularly evident during the Text Negotiation stage of Joint Construction, and can also been described as ‘contingent’ scaffolding (van Lier 1996; 2007). Here, contingent means that the teacher’s support is dependent upon students’ responses and modulated accordingly. While areas of need and students’ questions can be anticipated, analysis to date shows that unfolding interaction during Text Negotiation is often relatively spontaneous: time is provided for students to think about and respond to teachers’ prompts, and students have the freedom to interrupt with questions or queries (Humphrey & Macnaught 2011; Dreyfus, et al., 2011). The SLATE project built on these understandings of Joint Construction in order to apply them in the online context. Online Joint Construction was added to existing literacy support in the SLATE project because of its potential to provide explicit interactive guidance. The other forms of literacy support in the Teaching and Learning Cycle, namely Deconstruction (see Humphrey & Hao this volume) and Independent Construction (see Mahboob & Yilmaz this volume), prepare and then repair students’ developing linguistic resources. In contrast, Joint Construction is designed to provide real-time guidance as a text is being co-created. 5. Taking Joint Construction online While Deconstruction and feedback after Independent Construction can be provided asynchronously, Joint Construction requires synchronous intera- ction. This made it the most challenging stage to adapt to an online learning environment, because the goal was to bring to life an interactive learning space that asynchronous support cannot provide. In preparation for this chal- lenge, the SLATE team reviewed several other SFL-based projects, which have integrated technology with the TLC. Projects, such as those conducted by Ellis (2000; 2004), Woodward-Kron et al. (2000) and Drury (2004) have not attempted online Joint Construction. Instead, these projects have explored online field-building and Deconstruction. As Ellis (2004) and Drury (2004) have discussed, such preparation of asynchronous online materials has an impact on what Bernstein (2000) calls the ‘framing’ (selection, organization, pacing and timing) of literacy support: teachers focus on preparing valuable resources for students to interact with independently, at their own pace and in their own time. In contrast, Joint Construction requires real-time collaboration between teachers and students, which poses challenges with finding suit- able software and, in the case of the SLATE project, managing differing time zones. To conduct Joint Construction with the CityU students, the SLATE team had to negotiate the time and distance between students in Hong Kong and teachers in Sydney. The teacher was located at a computer terminal in Sydney (either in their University office or at home) while the students in Hong Kong were either alone or in groups at terminals in university computer labs. Priority was given to 6 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 students’ daytime university hours, which sometimes meant that teachers in Sydney were working outside normal office hours. In terms of software selection for the creation of a synchronous virtual classroom, after various trials, Adobe Connectä was chosen. As shown in Figure 2 below, this software allowed us to organize online Joint Construction with three simultaneous interactive windows: the whiteboard for scribing the jointly constructed text, which only the teacher had access to; the chat room, which provided line-by-line documentation of the dialogue space, and could be accessed by both students and teachers; and an attendees list that showed who was logged on and taking part in the lesson. Figure 2 Organisation of the Abode Connection interface for online Joint Construction 6. Online Joint Construction for the subject Language and Society For students at CityU, who were studying linguistics, the virtual classroom provided an opportunity to further develop their writing with a University of Sydney language tutor/teacher who was trained in Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Sydney School genre pedagogy. From an SFL perspective, language development involves increasing one’s meaning-making potential (Halliday, 1988; 1993). In the SLATE context, this meant supporting students’ selection and use of linguistic resources to create written texts that were appropriate to their various tertiary disciplines. The focus of the following 7 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 section is on the Joint Constructions provided for the CityU linguistics subject, ‘Language in Society’. This subject is an introduction to sociolinguistics and takes place in the first session of first year. Thus, the support provided by SLATE represented the beginning of a literacy spiral for linguistics students. During students’ first semester, two assignments in the Language and Society subject were supported by the SLATE project. These assignments were short writing tasks (approximately 200–300 words) and involved writing a summary of a part of the textbook and writing a definition of a complex linguistic concept. This section focuses on the latter of these. As with the other courses at CityU that were participating in the SLATE project, support for writing a definition was organized around the Teaching Learning Cycle and conducted in collaboration with the CityU course lecturer. Given that this was an introductory subject, support focused on aspects of generic academic literacy that form the foundation upon which more discipline-specific literacy skills are built. In Language and Society, the focus was on synthesizing and rewriting information from sources (the textbook in this case) and managing technicality to explain and exemplify key concepts. As these aspects of writing development were given priority, not all lexicogrammatical choices made by students in the Joint Construction were the subject of negotiation. Prior to Joint Construction, building sufficient field for writing was mostly conducted by the subject lecturer. This occurred in lectures, tutorials and with readings, which, in this case, were primarily from the course textbook, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (3rd edition) (Holmes 2008). In the Deconstruction stage, the literacy focus was on genre staging plus a variety of linguistic concepts that are key to definition writing. These included: nominalisation and nominal group structure for managing technicality, relational verbs and tense for describing concepts, passive voice for thematising technicality, attribution for referring to sources, and conjunctions and connectives to link points. As will be shown in the following section, the Joint Constructions focused predominantly on supporting students to manage technicality, by which we mean entities that are given field-specific names, or technical terms (Wignell, et al., 1989). 7. Interactive literacy support In Language and Society, the cycle of support that is described in this paper concentrates on managing technicality within a definition genre. As shown in the model text provided to students (Table 1), a definition is a brief genre which can be interpreted as having two main stages and several iterative phases. Literacy support for writing this genre focused on supporting students to be able to manage defining, unpacking and exemplifying linguistic concepts – all of which are key to the unfolding of the text. Being able to write defini- tions of linguistics concepts is a requirement of linguistic study, and becomes part of larger genres such as factorial explanations that students are required to write in other subjects (Dreyfus et al., forthcoming). Table 1: Stages and phases of a definition genre. Stages Phases Preview Concepts Definition This Definition explains the concepts variables and variants using examples. definition of concept A variable is an abstract feature (realized by two or more variants) that is investigated by a sociolinguist (Meyerhoff 2006). Variables are 8 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 elaboration of concept influenced by both linguistic and non-linguistic factors and sociolinguists often look to social factors to determine the likelihood of a particular linguistic variable. An example of a variable is the pronunciation of the example of NEAR lexical set (Wells 1982) on the island of Bequia in St Vincent and concept the Grenadines, where sometimes this variable is pronounced /he´/, whereas other times it is pronounced /hi´r/, depending on the context in which it is uttered. A variant is the actual example or instantiation of the variable being investigated (Meyerhoff 2006). The pronunciations /he´/ and /hi´r/ are definition the variants of the variable of the NEAR lexical set on the island of Bequia. of concept That is to say, it is the variable of the NEAR lexical set on the island of example of Bequia that is being investigated, but it is the different variants of /he´/ concept or /hi´r/ that are the realizations of that variable. clarification of concept In the Joint Construction conducted for students learning to write this genre, guided interaction frequently focused on positioning technical terms and then ‘unpacking’ these for the reader. ‘Unpacking’, in this case, refers to reducing the degree to which meaning is condensed. In a definition genre, this involves elaboration and exemplification of concepts that have been pre- viously introduced with their technical name. Analysis of interaction around this language focus is exemplified in two Joint Construction sessions (labelled A and B). These sessions were conducted by two different SLATE tutors/teachers, with two different groups of students from the same course. The findings from the analysis of these sessions will be organized into features concerning teacher-initiated interaction, and features to do with student-initiated inter- action. This distinction explores the way interaction during online Joint Construction differs from traditional IRF sequences. 7.1. Teacher-initiated interaction Analysis of online Joint Construction lessons for Language and Society shows particular patterns of talk where teachers frequently modify traditional three-part IRF sequences to give students a chance to expand their contributions. This is achieved through several mediation strategies that help maintain a central rather than fragmented language focus throughout the lesson. The focal point of managing technicality immediately arises as the Text Negotiation stage of Joint Construction A below commences (see table 2 below). In this Joint Construction students are being guided to write a text on the topic of linguistic convergence. Through explicit feedback in turn 3, the teacher provides the opportunity for the same student to self-recast (turn 4), extend (turn 5) and edit (turn 7) their original suggestion. This extended interaction enables the student to successfully create a more general topic sentence where the technical terms of upward and downward convergence are introduced. At the same time, the teacher is challenging the student (turn 7 and 12) to provide alternative language choices to those found in the model text. Table 2 Extended interaction with the same student in Joint Construction A Turn Contributor Chat 1 Teacher: ok so let's start writing. can you think of a sentence to begin the definition with? 2 Student 1: Upward convergence is defined as... 9 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 3 Teacher: Remeber if you look at the model, the first sentence has to introduce what you are going to write about so it needs to be more general than this *Remember 4 Student 1: Oh, you mean: This Definition explains the concepts of... 5 Teacher: yes that's it! can you finish that sentence you started? 6 Student 1: This definition explains the concepts of upward convergence and downward convergence using examples. 7 Teacher: good. that's great. though so it's not exactly the same as a model, can you think of another word for ''explains'' 8 Student 1: eleborates? oh... 9 Teacher: ok good one 10 Student 1: spelling mistake.. 11 Teacher: yah :-) 12 Teacher: ok what about we change the end of the sentence ''using examples'' so it's a bit different too. can you think of another way to include examples This example highlights the contrast between different types of literacy support provided in each stage of the Teaching and Learning Cycle: in Deconstruction, each model text presents one set of language choices; in supported Independent Construction, the student can only make changes once feedback on each draft has been received; however, in Joint Construction, a variety of language choices can be explored and students can be supported in making immediate changes to their text as needed. This focus on introducing and then explaining technical terms, with the model text as the point of departure, is maintained through the Joint Construction session. For example, in turn 37 the teacher types, ‘ok so let's just examine what we've written because what I want to point out to you is the way we've introduced a technical term ''attunement'' but then explained what it is straight away. That's an important skill to have. You need to be able to use abstract and technical language but also to explain it’. The same point is the target of the teacher’s elicitation in turn 57, where she asks, ‘Now in the paragraph above you've used a technical term for the person who is being spoken to. Can you see that? What is it as we really should use it instead of 'people'. Again, the importance of positioning and then unpacking technicality is reinforced in the teacher’s explicit evaluative comment in turn 104, ‘You write a complex and technical sentence which is really good, but then you need to explain it in concrete terms before providing the example’. As extensive studies in classroom discourse analysis have shown, this type of sustained focus, which is accompanied with precise diagnostic feedback, can be rare in traditional classroom interaction where rapid-fire IRF cycles frequently shift students’ attention towards a wide range of different pedagogic material as the lesson unfolds (Nystrand et al 1997; Wells 1999; Mercer 2000; Alexander 2001). An additional finding related to teacher-initiated interaction is that teachers often provided the opportunity for students to justify, and evaluate contributions. For example, in Joint Construction B, in Table 3 below, the teacher and students begin to write a topic sentence for their text on consonant variation across languages. Three students offer contributions, and in turn 84, the teacher asks students 10 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 to consider and select the most appropriate contribution. A further three students, as well as the original contributors, participate in the evaluation. Table 3: Opportunities for students to justify and evaluate contributions in Joint Construction B. Turn Contributor Chat 77 Teacher: In Activity one on Shooshi’s handout out to you, you were asked to have a go at creating a few more sentences. Can anyone suggest alternate wording to the first sentence that Shooshi gave you? What other wording could do the same job… 80 Student 1 …Differences between the consonants in four languages compared to English will be discussed in this interpretation 81 Student 2 This linguistic analysis deals with the consonants in four languages and their differences in compasion with Englsih. 82 Teacher: wonderful 83 Student 3: Compared to english, the differences between the consonants in four languages will be discussed. 84 Teacher: Which one should we choose? 85 Student 4: (student 2)’s one 86 Student 1: (student 2)’s 87 Teacher: Why is this choice better do you think? 88 Student 3: (student 3) 89 Student 4: with more specific terms 90 Student 2: for acadmeic writing passive voice is better 91 Teacher: yes. specific text type and very clear what the discussion will include. All in one sentence! yes passive voice is often very good. why? 92 Student 4: objective 93 Student 5: the theme of the sentence is put at the front 94 Teacher: yes the writer is not in the spotlight. the content is in the spotlight. Excellent. 95 Student (privately): Student 3: 96 Teacher: 3 emphasis the theme emphasis the theme Yes the what is put in theme position not the who This extract highlights that while the teacher does not shed their expert guiding role (see explicit evaluations to re-affirm students’ reasoning at turns 91, 94 and 96), Joint Construction provides the opportunity for students to genuinely explore language selection and use prior to assessment. The evaluations and reasoning are made transparent so that this positive and successful ‘shared experience’ can be recalled when students are making language choices independently. 7.2. Student-initiated interaction 11 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 In addition to being probed to justify choices and share reasoning, analysis of student interaction during Joint Construction also revealed that students initiated questions, and sought explicit guidance and clarification. These features again contribute to a marked deviation from rigid tripartite IRF exchanges where the teacher is the only interlocutor who asks questions. For example, at turn 19, in Table 4, student 1 asks for explicit guidance and evaluation, wanting to know if his suggestion is ‘too simple?’. Later, at turn 39, the same student asks, ‘Should I explain convergence further, or start to define upward convergence?’ At other times during the session, students sought clarification about prior contributions. For example, one student asked, ‘u mean we can use that is to say to conjunct the paragraph of upward convergence and downward convergence?’ Table 4: Students initiating questions and seeking clarification in Joint Construction A. Turn Contributor Chat 16 Teacher: 17 Student 1: ok so how about we start the next paragraph since you started with upward convergence, how about a sentence to start on that Should I give a general definition of convergence first? 18 Teacher: oh ok that's a good idea. you can 19 Student 1: Convergence is a strategy used in the process of attunement. Will it be too simple? 20 Teacher: no not at all - in fact then end is too complex. you need to explain what attunement is as it's a technical term and not clear to the reader… 39 Student 1: … Should i explain ''convergence'' further, or start to define ''upward convergence''? … 40 I think that's probably enough for convergence and you can now go straight into upward. Another key feature of student interaction in the online Joint Construc- tions is that students responded to each other’s suggestions. In concluding Joint Construction B and briefly reviewing what has been written, the teacher asks students to shorten the final sentence. Interestingly, this provides the opportunity for Student 3 to receive praise by other students (see turns 122 and 123 in Table 5). Following these affirming comments, two more students, at turns 125 and 127, further improve and refine student 3’s suggestion. After these contributions, the teacher closes the exchange by affirming the changes and providing an alternate use of punctuation. Although not the focus of this paper, such affective dimensions of interaction during Joint Construction also seem key to its success. Table 5: Students responding to each other’s suggestions in Joint Construction B. Turn Contributor Chat 119 Tutor: okay perhaps we can shorten the last sentence though? The analysis will..... we don't have to say 'four parts' because the paragraph will make that clear so let's change it a little 12 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 120 Student 3 the analysis will focus on polish, chinese ,italian and quechua 121 Tutor: Okay nice! what do others think? 122 Student 1: lovely 123 Student 5: great! 124 Student 3: thx 125 Student 2: The analysis will discuss including Polish, Chinese, Italian and Quechua separatly 126 Tutor: punctuation? 127 128 Student 1: Tutor: Capitalize each language name that's it! any other ways to use punctuation to make a list? you can also use a colon. The analysis will focus on: Polish, Chinese, Italian and Quechua. both are fine. Our list is short. so what we have works well The examples that have been provided in this section highlight the collaborative potential of teacherled Joint Construction. Of central importance in this type of pedagogic interaction is the teacher’s ability to employ mediation strategies that enable a sustained language focus throughout the lesson. In order to maintain a focus on negotiating new ways of expressing and organizing meaning, this analysis has explored several key modifications to traditional IRF sequences. These include: extended interaction with the same student; opportunities for students to recast their initial suggestions, or build on each other’s suggestions; seeking more than one correct answer so that students have a pool of language choices; asking students to justify and evaluate each other’s contributions; and providing explicit evaluation where needed. An example of the collaborative text that is produced through this type of classroom interaction is shown in Table 6. As Table 6 displays, the collaborative interaction between the teacher and students resulted in a text with the two required stages of Preview and Concepts. Compared to the model text (shown in Table 1) there is some variation in the order of the phases. This is due to the fact that the topic, upward and downward convergence, needed to have the superordinate term ‘convergence’ defined before each type of convergence was defined. Additionally, as the col- laborative interaction emphasized, the phases show the packaging of knowledge as technicality at the beginning of paragraphs, in the ‘definition of concept’ phases, followed by the unpacking of that technicality in the concrete examples and elaboration phases. (See Maton in press, for theorisation of this kind of movement. The final section of this paper explores the impact of the technology on Joint Construction in terms of the generic staging. It compares the staging of the online Joint Construction to the staging of face-toface lessons that were identified by Humphrey & Macnaught (2011) and the phasing identified by Dreyfus, et al., (2011). Table 6: Text created during Joint Construction A. Stages Phases Definition 13 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 Preview Concepts ‘definition of concept’ ‘definition of concept’ ‘example of concept’ ‘definition of concept’ ‘clarification of concept’ ‘example of concept’ This definition elaborates the concepts of upward convergence and downward convergence, and provides examples of both of these concepts. Convergence is a strategy used in the process of attunement, which refers to when people alter their style of speaking in order to fit in with their addressees. Upward convergence is the adjustment by speakers towards the speech of addressees with more power or higher status, or someone who is respected in the context. For example, when Japanese students talk with their professor, they would use the honourific form as a form of respect, as the professor has higher status than the students. This concept can be demonstrated by both the standard form and the honorific form in Japanese. The standard form of the verb ''to do'' in Japanese is 'suru' (する). This form is appropriate with family members and close friends. However, in this case, the student would properly use 'shimasu' which is the polite form of 'suru'. Downward convergence is the attunement made to address interlocutors with lower status and power. That is to say, people simplify their language or speak down to others of lower status. For example, when speaking to their children, parents use simpler vocabulary than if they are talking to adults. 8. The impact of technology on the staging of online Joint Construction The use of virtual classroom technology affected the way the online Joint Constructions unfolded. Our analysis showed that the stages of the online Joint Constructions configured in slightly different ways to the face-to-face lessons. As exemplified in section 4, the face-to-face lessons involved the stages of Bridging, Text Negotiation and Review. However, analysis of the online Joint Constructions yielded the three stages of Set-up, Text Negotiation and Wrap-up. The differences and similarities will be discussed below. Similar to face-to-face lessons, the Text Negotiation stage was the longest stage and involved negotiating meaning and scribing the text. However, the first and last stages were quite different. For the initial stage in the online Joint Constructions, the physical setting up of the lesson was timeconsuming. Unlike face-to-face Joint Constructions, where the lesson begins all at once with the teacher and students assembled in the same room, in the virtual classroom, students entered at different times as they were often at different computers. In some cases, they logged on from their home computers, and in others from a computer lab at the university. In order to encourage students and make them feel welcome, the Set Up stage consisted of many individual greeting phases, as well as directing students to the resources. In some cases, the Set-up stage also involved testing sound. Although the software has the capacity for participants to audibly discuss text as well as writing chat, the sound proved to be unreliable with some students not able to hear the teacher. Therefore, most teachers chose to type their chat and scribe the jointly constructed text. These software and equipment issues meant getting the lesson started took significantly longer in the online environment than in face-toface lessons. An extract of this initial Set Up stage can be seen in Table 7. 14 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 Table 7: Extract of the Set Up stage in online Joint Construction Set Up phases greeting directing resources Contributor Teacher: Student 2: to Teacher: Student 1: Teacher: Teacher: Student 3: Student 1: Student 1: Teacher: greeting Teacher: Student 1: Teacher: Teacher: Chat Hi (name) hello (name), (name), and (name), did you bring the activity sheets and the support materials for writing the report? Is it the one that contain two activities? yes it asked you to find the topic sentences in the model report and to work out what the tense and voice of the verbs were i have the support materials yes i did which one is the support material? the support material are the nots for writing the report. Both the activities and the notes were posted on blackboard oops notes not nots! yes i have them too, well (name), has disappeared and it looks like only (name),and (name), are here - oh look. Here is (name), Hello (name). Ok great. Let's start then One interesting adaptation to the first stage of online Joint Construction involves using technology to organize resources prior to joint writing. As teachers became more familiar with using Adobe Connect, they made use of the whiteboard function to achieve the purpose of the Bridging stage, i.e. to recap key field and genre features. This function enabled teachers to post multiple pages of resources, which were available as soon as students ‘entered’ the virtual classroom. These resources commonly included a welcome message, instructions about the class, summary notes of key content for writing, and previously analysed model texts. The use of the whiteboard served to focus students’ attention on the specific writing task and also give them something to read while waiting for other students to log in. Table 8 is an example of the first welcome page. Table 8: Welcome page using the whiteboard function in Adobe Connect Hi everyone, Welcome to today’s online writing lesson. We are going to be working on your second assignment and you need to have your notes from assignments 1 & 2 as well as the completed activities from assignment 2. Today we’re going to be writing a definition, which has the stages of Preview and Concepts, and the topic is upward and downward convergence. If you have everything ready, when everyone’s here we can start. The final stage in the online Joint Constructions was much briefer than the final stage in the face-toface lessons. In face-to-face Joint Constructions, there is often more flexibility regarding lesson length, 15 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 so the Review stage is often given substantial time (Humphrey and Macnaught, 2011). In contrast, online Joint Constructions in the SLATE project had set start and finish times. Teachers tended to maximize the Text Negotiation stage and often ran out of time to conduct a thorough review. Therefore, the Review stage tended to consist of the teacher emphasizing one key transferable point of the lesson, providing instructions about what to do next and offering encouragement. In closing the lesson and trying to get a sense of how students experienced the virtual classroom, teachers also often asked for feedback. These features of the Wrap Up stage can be seen in Table 9. Table 9: Wrap Up stage of online Joint Construction Phases in Wrap Up Contributor stage of online JC encouragement Teacher: Teacher: farewell Student 5: Student 6: Student 7: key point Teacher: farewell Teacher: Student 7: Student 7: Chat well done everyone Good luck with the rest see u thank you everyone! thank you very much this issue of working out when to be general and when to be specific is great for your writing Bye for now! ya, we gain a lot bye bye From the above analysis of the stages and phases found within online Joint Construction, it can be seen that as with face-to-face Joint Construction, there are still three distinct stages. However, the first and last stages vary due to time pressure and the affordances and constraints of using virtual classroom software. 9. Conclusion This paper has explored the use of online Joint Construction with students studying in the linguistics programme at CityU Hong Kong. It has shown how the adaptation of Joint Construction to an online virtual classroom can pro- vide opportunities for students to supply and practise their understandings and knowledge about language and text which they have gained in Deconstruction. It has also shown how teachers can continue the Deconstruction work of targeting key language features and help build students’ confidence before they attempt independent writing. A key finding is that online Joint Construction carefully intertwines explicit teacher evaluation with opportunities for students to develop, justify and query initial contributions. This points to the potential of interaction in Joint Construction to break down pervasive and often limiting IRF sequences. While not within the scope of this paper, Macnaught and Dreyfus (forthcoming) focus on student texts produced after participation in online Joint Construction lessons. Other key areas for further exploration could include: students switching between ‘text-speak’ and traditional orthography in virtual writing lessons; the creation and management of interpersonal relations during collaborative writing, and the longitudinal effects of participation in embedded online literacy support on students’ writing development. 16 This is an Author Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Equinox in Linguistics and the Human Sciences on 2013-03-22. Online access through: https://journal.equinoxpub.com/LHS/article/view/12881 References Alexander, R. (2001) Culture & Pedagogy. MA: Blackwell. Applebee, A. N., & Langer, A. L. (1983) Instructional Scaffolding: Reading and Writing as Natural Language Activities. Language Arts vol.60(2):168-175. Bernstein, B. 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