A systemic analysis of learner discourse in language education: a Systemic Functional Linguistics perspective

Language education has become ever more collaborative over the years, with learners being encouraged to work together and exchange ideas, stories and opinions. At the same time, there has been a major shift to online education, making this collaboration increasingly digital. Despite the resolute turn to online and hybrid education, our understanding of the language used in online collaborative language learning spaces tends to lag behind. Because of this gap, we are unable to fully understand the collaborative learning processes that are taking place. This paper presents a new methodological approach, part of a research project that aims to systematically describe and analyse digital discourse for collaborative language learning, combining Systemic Functional Linguistics methods for data annotation and Epistemic Network Analysis for data visualisation. The purpose of this paper is two-fold: 1) to suggest new methods for discourse analysis to improve our understanding of digital text, and 2) to use this knowledge to start a conversation within the language education field to optimise the integration and assessment of online learning spaces. This paper presents new ways to annotate the systemic functional building blocks of collaborative learning in digital contexts. We also discuss how Epistemic Network Analysis measures can be used to show the relationships and possible dependencies between these text features. These methods are intended to serve as the basis for discussing both the design of digital spaces for learning and the support mechanisms educators can provide throughout the student learning process.