A Study On Interaction In Discussion Forums For MOOC Of Listening And Speaking English For Marine ETO

Listening and Speaking English for Marine ETO on the platform of “Chinese College MOOC” is selected.The social network analysis method,corpus-based approach and content analysis method are applied in the thesis.The interaction data generated from discussion forums is analyzed from three aspects including the interaction extent,content and quality,so suggestions are offered.Relevant educational theories,such as constructivism,learning community theory,social interaction theory and online collaborative learning theory are used to guide the thesis.The results display that:(1)In terms of interaction extent,the mode of teacher-directed and students-centered has been formed.Nevertheless,there are differences in the frequency of interaction between learners,and it is easy to form subgroups,which is a slight disadvantage of this MOOC.(2)It is regarding interaction content.On lexical levels,the vocabulary used is more difficult,including lots of professional words;more content words are applied,so the amount of information is relatively larger.Thus,English Vocabulary Teaching is the key to ESP.However,the average word level is relatively lower,so learners’ English level needs to be improved.On syntactic levels,the sentence structure used by learners is more complicated,mainly due to the fact that learners are liable to cite expressions of specialized English and copy knowledge points.There are significant differences in the lexical density and mean sentence length among different types of learners.(3)In line with interaction quality,although a lot of posts exist in discussion forums,the interaction level still remains at the first phase of knowledge-sharing.This is mainly due to the fact that learners’ critical thinking is not fully open under the influence of traditional classroom.In combination with the above analysis,three links,including the pre-class,while-class and post-class are provided to optimize discussion forums.Among them,the pre-class link stimulates learning interest,the while-class link triggers thinking and reflection,and the post-class link improves learning experience.The results of the research have positive effects on the construction and macro-control of MOOC discussion forums.Firstly,the current situation of MOOC discussion forums is pointed out,which provides reference for online teaching and feedback for College English Teaching.Secondly,relevant suggestions for the development of foreign language MOOCs discussion forums in the next stage are put forward,so as to continue to play the advantages of MOOC discussion forums,promote the sustainable development of MOOCs,and facilitate the construction of high-quality MOOCs.