Students' interaction with web-based literature: towards dissolution of language boundaries

The aim of this study is to investigate how new knowledge can be developed in computer-mediated social practice. Its focus is on how language frames university students’ interaction and action while studying web-based literature in small task-based groups. The empirical data were collected from a case study where 57 Rwandan student teachers were completing an examination task mediated by computer at the end of an academic course. The study draws on naturally occurring talk, observations and in-depth interviews. The data were analysed from a sociocultural perspective. The findings reveal that students coping with web-based literature face a twofold reality of classroom discourse rooted in their sociocultural and educational contexts: the one conveyed through foreign languages of instruction, the other whose vehicle is their native language. The study suggests an alternative way of constructing a substantial learning discourse based on dissolution of language boundaries.