Abstract
Drawing on sociocultural theory and situated learning, this study examined factors affecting second language (L2) students’ participation in online forums in the two academic courses and explored how those factors constructed the students’ identities in both face-to-face and online communities. In addressing these aspects, I used student interview data as the major source of investigation and also referred to the written questionnaires, interviews with the instructors, field notes of the face-to-face class observations and examination of online Bulletin Board (BB) texts. Important factors affecting students’ participation on the BBs included the asynchronous nature of written communication, a computer-mediated activity, participation rules, lack of practice in debate, and the relationship with other members. These factors could either facilitate or inhibit students’ participation, and sometimes affected L1 and L2 students differently.
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