Chatten in het Onderwijs: Een Analyse van Chatgesprekken Tussen Basisschoolleerlingen en Onderwij Sassistenten

This study focuses on the analyses of chat logs from chat conversations in which elementary school pupils ask help from their tutors. Starting from the initial observation that chat room communication and telephone conversation have certain obvious similarities I use results of conversation analysis studies into telephone conversations (Schegloff, Hopper, Houtkoop-Steenstra) to research the patterns of chat interaction. This provides me with the opportunity to have a detailed look into the sequence of chat conversations.As regards the theoretical framework of the interaction analyses, it is an interesting finding that technical possibilities of the medium have an influence on the way in which the interaction by participants is structured. For instance, there is less need to go through an identification-frequency in chat communication than there is in telephone conversation. At the same time, the nature of the medium seems to influence the conversation subjects and the way in which the conversation participants interpret an interaction contribution. A pupil who is familiar with commercially available chat software, for instance Microsoft Messenger, has a tendency to bring up informal conversation instead of asking for help.