This study bridges language use in sociolinguistics and language learning from ecological linguistics by framing the course design in the theories of languaging, which means a “process of making meaning and shaping knowledge and experience through language” (Swain, 2006, p. 98).This study entails one case study of ten Chinese high-school students as a group in an online course of English Writing which was created to prepare the students/participants for a timed English writing competition. The course was designed based on the ecological (van Lier,2000), dialogical and distributed (EDD) framework (Linell, 2015) which acknowledges the role that dialogues play in human thinking when they engage in talking to others, reading texts, working with computers and artefacts as well as making sense of the socially interactive environment. Based on the fact that the competition does not have a rubric and the needs analysis from their English teachers indicating that students need more training in critical analysis, the researcher designed a curriculum that engaged students in online large-group peer response activities with an objective of placing students in an online ecology of rich resources.The ten two-hour synchronous sessions were coded to investigate how multi-modal synchronous communication affords students’ learning of second language writing. The results indicate this online platform build a community of practice in which each member serves as a reservoir of resources for others. The presentation will demonstrate how the online communication mode influences students' use of language by showcasing language learners' translanguaging during face-to-face online sessions(Garcia & Wei, 2014) and the analysis of the socially constructed materials in this online course environment using Linell's theory of dialogism.
García, O., & Wei, L. (2014). Translanguaging and education. In Translanguaging: Language, bilingualism and education(pp. 63-77). Palgrave Macmillan, London.
Linell, P. (2015). Dialogism and the Distributed Language Approach: a rejoinder to Steffensen. Language Sciences, 50, 120-126.
Swain, M. (2006). Languaging, agency and collaboration in advanced language proficiency. In H. Byrnes (Ed.), Advanced language learning: The contribution of Halliday and Vygotsky (pp. 95–108). London: Continuum.
van Lier, L. (2000).From input to affordance: Social-interactive learning from an ecologicalperspective. Sociocultural theory and second language learning, 245.
