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Weekly UpdatesABSTRACT
A number of CALL studies suggest the potential benefits of network-based communication for L2 acquisition, focusing on its nature for inducing negotiation of meaning. This study examined negotiation of meaning that took place between students and native speakers of Japanese over a series of chat conversations and attempted to categorize the difficulties encountered. The data showed that the difficulties in understanding each other did indeed trigger negotiation of meaning between students even when no specific communication tasks were given. Using discourse analysis methods, the negotiations were sorted into nine categories according to the causes of the difficulties: recognition of new word, misuse of word, pronunciation error, grammatical error, inappropriate segmentation, abbreviated sentence, sudden topic change, slow response, and inter-cultural communication gap. Through the examination of these categories of negotiation, it was found that there were some language aspects that are crucial for communication but that had been neglected in teaching, and that students would not have noticed if they had not had the opportunity to chat with native speakers. In light of these findings, the authors make pedagogical recommendations on some classroom tasks for improving chat conversations.
INTRODUCTION
As a result of technological innovations, new types of communication, namely network-based communication, have emerged. These new technologies, e-mail and chat in particular, are being used increasingly in second/foreign language (L2) learning environments. Many researchers regard this type of communication as a promising tool for language learning, as it allows learners to interact with native speakers from the country where their target language is spoken. Previous research suggests that it increases learners' opportunities to use the target language (Barson, Frommer, & Schwartz, 1993), induces a series of negotiations of meaning (Blake, 2000), and improves the quality of written and spoken language (Sotillo, 2000).
SLA Theories
Second language acquisition (SLA) theories advocate that oral interaction that requires negotiation of meaning is necessary for enhancing learners' interlanguage (Ellis, 1985; Long, 1991; Pica, 1994; Swain, 1993, 1995). Negotiation of meaning is defined as "modification and restructuring of interaction that occurs when learners and their interlocutors anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility" (Pica, 1994, p. 495). Modification and restructuring include repetitions, confirmations, reformulations, comprehension checks, recasts, confirmation checks, and clarification requests (Long, 1996).
The Interaction Hypothesis (Gass, 1997; Long, 1996, 1991) claims that resolving miscommunication (negotiation of meaning) enhances L2 learning, as it provides more opportunities for comprehensible input and modified output. The Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1993, 1995) explains that producing output is one way of testing a hypothesis about comprehensibility or linguistic well-formedness (Swain, 1995, p. 126), and that learners' hypothesis testing often invokes interaction between the learners and their interlocutor(s). Native speaker difficulties in following learners' interlanguage may trigger feedback, which in return may induce changes in the learners' output. Negotiation of meaning also occurs on occasions where the native speakers' input is above the learners' threshold level of understanding. Learners may notice a gap between their interlanguage and the language that native speakers produce, and may request clarification. The output hypothesis thus claims that the output induces negotiation of meaning and the negotiation leads to the enhancement of the learners' interlanguage.
CALL Studies on Negotiation of Meaning
Many CALL researchers postulate that network-based communication can facilitate second language acquisition in a similar fashion to face-to-face negotiations in classroom settings, and have found abundant evidence of comprehensible input and modified output resulting from negotiation of meaning (Blake, 2000; Kitade, 2000; Pellettieri, 2000; Warschauer, 1998). They claim that this type of communication may be beneficial for enhancing learners' interlanguage even more than oral conversations, as the learners can view their language as they produce it and they are more likely to 'monitor' and edit their messages (Kitade, 2000; Ortega, 1997; Pellettieri, 2000; Warshauer, 1998). One of the distinctive features of network-based communication, a lack of non-verbal cues, may facilitate negotiation of meaning as communication has to rely merely on verbal correspondence(Kitade, 2000). Another advantage is that logs of the communications can be saved, which can then be reviewed later on by the learners and their teachers. These logs can be valuable resources for the enhancement of the learners' interlanguage (Blake, 2000).
In the networked environment, learners can engage in asynchronous communication or synchronous communication. E-mail is one type of asynchronous communication where people can take time to read and write messages. The delayed nature of this type of communication gives learners more opportunities to produce syntactically complex language (Sotillo, 2000). On the other hand, synchronous communication, such as chat, requires instantaneous responses as in face-to-face communication. By comparing synchronous and asynchronous modes, Sotillo claims that the quality and types of discourse functions present in synchronous discussions were similar to the types of interactional modifications found in face-to-face conversations. As there is no physical environment or non-verbal signals to share (Kitade, 2000), chat may be referred as a'text-mediated telephone conversation."
Research Questions
Although a number of CALL studies suggest the potential benefits of network-based communication for L2 acquisition focusing on its nature for inducing negotiation of meaning, few have investigated the triggers for negotiation in a free conversation setting. Even fewer have mentioned how the logs can be utilized for the enhancement of learners' interlanguage. In order to beneficially use network-based communication for L2 learning, more research based on discourse analysis is called for. The purpose of this study is to examine the Japanese chat data in order to uncover specific types of communication difficulties that trigger negotiation of meaning, and based on findings from these analyses, to make recommendations on how the quality of communication can be improved.
STUDY
Participants
The participants were 5 undergraduate students enrolled in an advanced level Japanese course, Japanese Multimedia, offered in Semester 2, 2000 at the University of Melbourne. One of the main aims of this course was to enhance students' autonomous learning skills in Japanese through research and presentation using multimedia tools. The participant students undertook a semester-long project, created a Web site, and electronically interacted with their partners using the chat function of a 3-dimensional language learning environment called JEWELS. 2 The students were all advanced learners of Japanese who had studied the language for at least 4 years and had in-country experiences prior to participation in the project. In face-to-face communication with the teacher, they had no trouble getting their meaning across despite making some subtle errors. Their partners were all native speakers of Japanese (students and teachers) who resided in Japan or the USA at the time of chatting.
JEWELS
We created an online virtual university campus, named JEWELS (Japanese-language Education Worldwide Electronic Learning Space) using software from an American company called Activeworlds (www.activeworlds.com). This software allows one to create 3-D models of buildings, and has a library of ready-made objects such as chairs, tables, and computers for creating rooms, and so forth. The users log in with a username and password, and are rendered as 3-D avatars which appear in the scene. They can even fly if they want to. When they log in, the users see the 3-D environment in the left hand window of the browser (see Figure 1) and on the right side see a window for displaying WWW pages based on Internet Explorer. Communication between the users in the environment is through a chat window below the 3-D window. Users can communicate to all the other users in the environment, or to individuals using a whisper chat window. All the chat dialogues appear in the chat log window immediately below the 3-D window.
In our case we used Japanese fonts for the chatting. We configured the program to handle Japanese fonts using a utility program called Emigrant32, which allowed Japanese fonts to be displayed in the chat windows and in the WWW browser window. However, this was dependent on the user having a Japanese Windows operating system running on their computer. We installed Japanese versions of Windows 98 on the Melbourne machines so that the software would run correctly. Input in Japanese is carried out through standard QWERTY keyboards with the users typing in Romanized Japanese, which the software automatically converts into Hiragana or Katakana (phonetic-based scripts) as appropriate. Pressing the space bar brings up a window from which the users can choose the correct Kanji (non-phonetic-based script). This is the standard form of Japanese input used on every Japanese capable computer.
Use of Avatars
The built-in avatars in Activeworlds could be used in two ways. Firstly, the appearance of the avatar could be chosen so that it could be female or male or even a bird. Kim (2000) notes that avatars are one way in which participants are able to create their own persona, and that an important part of building an online community is to use personal profiles to distinguish individuals within the online community (p.101). Secondly, the avatars could move around in the environment using the arrow keys, taking different viewpoints of the environment. Each avatar had associated programmable actions such as waving, dancing, fighting, and so forth.
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