The Benefits (and Disadvantages) of Using SCMC in Foreign Language Classroom Setting

Susana García Prudencio

I would like to describe some advantages of Synchronous Computer-Mediated Communication (SCMC) that I have found interesting while reading some of the papers for class. I will focus in synchronous written text; in addition some allusions to synchronous oral chats will be mentioned. The effects of the SCMC environments are very varied. Next, I will list the most important advantages, in my opinion, within SCMC environments:

Low stress environment. Students feel more comfortable in this familiar environment and the level of anxiety in class will be diminished. Besides, participation class could be positively affected with less anxiety.
Written text gives the opportunity to go back and re-read the recent conversation. Then, students can go upward to check their own messages, as well as, the others.

Students and instructors can print the conversations taken and work later on with them. Also, they can work with their interlanguage competence.
In written chats the students have more time to formulate their preverbal plan.
In written chats the students have more time to respond the other(s) question(s) or statements. Because of this, students’ responses are more complex due to the extra time and less anxiety.
Provides a great deal of additional interactive language practice.
Promotes not only written or grammatical skills but other cognitive and pragmatic skills too, such as oral proficiency, reading and listening abilities, accuracy, pragmatic competence, and lexical acquisition, among others.
Gives to the instructor and students the possibility to share any kind of file to work with (e.g. PDF file, images, word documents, etc.).
It is ideal for distance learning and hybridization courses.
Oral chats students can practice pronunciation and intonation, besides all cognitive skills that listening competence evolved.
Several scholars support the idea that SCMC share similarities with oral communication, in terms of participant roles, discourse functions, and negotiation of meaning.
It is ideal for collaborative projects and promotes creativity.
Facilitates more contact with the target language than in traditional classrooms settings. Therefore, students are exposed to more input and intake which help them to improve their target language.

However, SCMC environments also entail several disadvantages such the following:

It is hard to set up, therefore ICC (Intercultural Communication) is difficult to establish.
You need to be familiar with the interface, program or software need it for the SCMC environment.
It is possible to find digression in the discourse of the conversations, as you can find these off-task problems in any classroom setting.
Keyboarding.
It is usual to find typos in written chat environments.
No prosody: because there is no sound, it is hard to practice pronunciation and intonation.
Because prosody is not possible in written chats, emoticons or other kind of emotional expressions are required in order not to offend the other interlocutors.
It can be concerning the use of abbreviations, such as “b/w” (between) in English or “pq” (porque) in Spanish.
It can be seen as a mean in which simultaneous feedback is absence and messages are posted as soon as the system receive them (disrupted turn adjacency).

References

Sykes, J. (2005). Synchronous CMC and pragmatic development: Effects of oral and written chat. CALICO Journal, 22(3): 399-431

Herring, Susan. (1999). Interactional coherence in CMC. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 4 (4) June 1999.

Thorne, S. (1999).Chapter 3: Educational and foreign/second language uses of computer-mediation: A review of research. In: An activity theoretical analysis of foreign language electronic discourse. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

Class notes.