Knowledge building occurs when students work together and participate in idea-centred discussions where they share information and create knowledge collectively. This research explores whether knowledge building in knowledge forums using English as the "lingua franca" can facilitate in foreign language learning. An analysis was done on…

Ten Spanish adolescents with profound, prelingual hearing impairments received instruction in organizing their written stories. Instruction emphasized the importance of the narrative structure and the writing process and offered different activities about the narrative text. Some of the students improved the quality of their writing and their…