‘I think’ as an Interactional Resource during Discussions in Collaborative Writing Tasks

Abstract

The present study involves videorecording students’ interaction during their small group discussion regarding academic writing issues in their discipline study. It focuses on how the interaction among the peers unfolds and how the participants orient to the talk and the task. The proposed study has two objectives: firstly, it makes an attempt to understand what type of the interactional patterns that the second language speakers of English employ during group discussions in an ESL writing class in general; and secondly it addresses how one particular ESL student, develops his interactional competence in using ‘stance taking token’ ‘I think’ over a period of one semester. Seven international graduate students enrolled in an academic writing course in an intensive English program were recruited, and their interactions in academic writing tasks were analyzed with a particularly focus on stance taking ‘I think’ sequences. Different interactional functions of ‘I think’ will be discussed.