Comparing Paper and Forum Journaling in the Second Language Classroom

Abstract

This study focused on comparing the effects of paper versus forum journaling on the written production of Chinese as a foreign language (CFL) learners, as well as investigating the learners’ perceptions of using forum journaling to learn Chinese. Participants in this study were 17 third-year CFL learners at the collegiate level in the United States. The study findings indicate that there is no significant difference between the lexical variation of participants’ journals on paper and in a forum. However, a statistical significance is observed between the syntactic complexity of the two types of journals. The participants’ journals in the forum were syntactically less complex than the ones on paper. Despite the lack of difference in lexical variation and less complex syntactic structure found in the forum journals, the majority of the participants responded positively toward using this tool for learning Chinese writing.