Julie A. Belz

Linguistic approach to the investigation of evaluative language. The quality of conversation may well be one of the most significant measures of civilization, and when people converse, the interlocutors inevitably realize that civilizations do not clash, contrary to some academic reductionists, the media, and politicians... (Kadir, 2003, p. 9; emphasis added)

This article examines how social, cultural, and institutional affordances and constraints in a telecollaborative foreign language learning partnership shape the agency of online teachers. In particular, it details how various aspects of schools and schooling impact the negotiation, execution, and management of a German–American virtual course from the perspectives of the teachers. These aspects include: the misalignment of academic calendars, local patterns of socialization into the teaching profession, institution–specific classroom scripts, systems of learning assessment, student workloads, and the physical layouts of local institutions and social forms of classroom collaboration. The article presents a self–reflective case study of our 10–month electronic negotiation, execution, and management of a German–American telecollaborative partnership within the constructivist paradigm of social realism. Using Agar's (1994) notion of the linguistic rich point and examining patterns of communication, specific lexical items, and grammatical structures, the study uncovers how the culturally varying nature of schools and schooling is linguistically encoded in the texts of electronic correspondence.

The basic argument of this paper is that multiple language use in learner output is not always and exclusively indicative of the deficient nature (V. Cook, 1999; Firth and Wagner, 1997; Kramsch, 1997, 1998) of the language learner with respect toan idealized monolingual second language (L2) linguistic norm. Multilingual written learner texts and learners’ explications of these texts are examined in detail. These data suggest that learners conceptualize themselves as multicompetent (V. Cook, 1991, 1992, 1999) speakers who regularly, playfully and creatively decouple conventionalized L2 form-meaning pairings in order to produce and use their own locally relevant L2 signs. Within mainstream Second Language Acquisition (SLA) research practices and correctness-oriented Foreign Language Teaching (FLT) methodologies, this departure from norm approximation may be interpreted to indicate the reduced (Harder, 1980) or deficient nature of the learner. Within a Vygotskian approach to the psychology of mind and language learning (e.g., Lantolf, 2000a; Lantolf and Appel, 1994; Vygotsky, 1978, 1986), however, the learner’s playful use of multiple linguistic codes may index resourceful, creative and pleasurable displays of multicompetence (V. Cook, 1991,1992).

Previous research on network-based foreign language study has primarily focused on: a) the pedagogy of technology in the language curriculum, or b) the linguistic characterization of networked discourse. In this paper, I explore socio-institutional dimensions of German-American telecolla boration and the ways in which they may shape foreign language learning and use. Telecollaborative partnerships represent particularly productive sites for the examination of social aspects of foreign language study since, by definition, they entail tight sociocultural and institutional interface. Within the theoretical framework of social realism (e.g., Carter & Sealey, 2000; Layder, 1993), any human activity is thought to be shaped by both macro-and micro-level sociological features. These include socia l context and institutional setting, situated activity and individual agency, respectively. In this analysis, I intertwine the socially and institutionally contingent features of language valuation, computer know-how, Internet access, and learning accreditation and the micro features of situated classroom interaction and individual psycho-biography in order to provide a rich and multi-faceted characterization of foreign language learning and use on both ends of a German-American telecollaborative partnership.

Network-based language teaching (NBLT) involves the application of global or local communication networks within foreign and second language education (Warschauer and Kern, 2000). In telecollaboration, a type of NBLT, distally located language learners use internet communication tools to support dialogue, debate, collaborative research and social interaction for the purposes of language development and cultural awareness (e.g. Kinginger et al., 1999). To date, the research on NBLT has been limited, focusing primarily on pedagogical implementations of technology and linguistic features of online communication. In particular, researchers have not robustly explored social and institutional dimensions of telecollaboration (Chapelle, 2000:217) nor have they adequately investigated the pervasive assumption that telecollaborative interaction will necessarily and unproblematically afford language learning (e.g. Kramsch and Thorne, to appear). Drawing on social realism (Layder, 1993), a sociological theory which emphasizes the inter-relationship between structure, i.e. society and institution, and agency, i.e. situated activity and psycho-biography, in researching and explaining social action, I present a sociocultural account of German-American telecollaboration. In particular, I explore the meanings that the macro features of (1) language valuation (Hilgendorf, 1996); (2) membership in electronic discourse communities (Gee, 1999); and (3) culturally determined classroom scripts (Hatch, 1992) may have for the differential functionality of virtual group work in this partnership. Differences in group functionality are reflected at the micro-interactional level in terms of (1) frequency and length of correspondence; (2) patterns of discursive behavior such as question-answer pairs; and (3) opportunities for assisted L2 performance and negotiation of meaning. Ethnographic data (e.g. interviews, electronic and classroom discourse, surveys and participant observations) on individual psycho-biographies are interwoven with macro-level descriptions and statistics to paint a rich picture of learner behavior in intercultural telecollaboration. This project is funded by a United States Department of Education International Research and Studies Program Grant (CFDA No.: 84.017A). The author is a research associate for the German component.