Interactional dimension of online asynchronous exchange in an asymmetric telecollaboration

Abstract

The telecollaborative project under study involves, on the one hand, Masters students who are studying to become teachers and who design the tasks as well as tutor them, and, on the other hand, French language students. The relationship in this type of telecollaboration has been shown to be both asymmetric and symmetric. The hypothesis this paper seeks to examine is that designing tasks and providing corrective feedback by the ‘native’ partners tends to take precedence over less formal exchanges. We thus analyse the patterns of communicative exchange between tutors and learners in the forum and we examine if there are less formal episodes between them. We are interested in the conditions under which they appear.