The CATESOL Journal

To succeed academically, students must learn how to develop critical response to texts (both written texts and visual texts). Asynchronous forums provide an ideal setting for developing these response practices. This article illustrates how the author created scaffolded online forum discussions to support students in their academic literacy development. These discussions took place in a high-intermediate community college ESL class that included early- and late-arriving immigrant students, US-educated multilingual writers who have graduated from US high schools, and international students. The article concludes with a list of issues that teachers should consider when attempting to use online forum discussions in their specific contexts.