Collaborative Interaction in French Language Undergraduates:

An Online Education Experience in Pandemic Times

Abstract

This article aims to present and discuss language uses and practices that have promoted participation and collaborative interaction among undergraduate students in a platform used for online education. The learning practices took place in the context of a French morphosyntax course for the Undergraduate Program in French Language Studies at Universidade de Brasília, during the remote teaching period resulting from the 2020 pandemic. Supported by the notions of text mediated learning and collaborative interaction (WARSCHAUER, 1997; ZOUROU, 2007; BRAGA, 2013), the practices aimed to provide learning the language and about the language, taking as a textual resource for reflection the very linguistic-discursive material constructed by the students in their interactions in the online environment. The students' narratives indicate that the adopted online education perspective favors the pedagogical focus on collaboratively negotiating meanings, at the same time that it makes room for critical work on language and the processes of meaning-making in online environments.