Presentation16 10-2010

The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life

Sedat Akayoglu

16.10.2010


Outline

• The purpose of the study

• Method

• Participants

• Data Collection Procedure

• Data analysis

• Findings

• Conclusion and Recommendations

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• “a sociocultural perspective toward interaction research

emphasizes the need for teachers and researchers to

better understand the context of interaction of second

language learners and accordingly there is a need for

„ethnographic and discourse-analytic methods‟ with their

emphasis on the broader context in which the learning

takes place...”

Chappelle (2004, p.595)

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The purpose of the study

• The purpose of the study was to determine the

discourse pattern of a course carried out in SL in

terms of negotiation of meaning functions and to find

out which functions were used the most frequently

and the least frequently.

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Negotiation of Meaning (NoM)

• Pica (1994) defined NoM as “modification and

reconstructing of interaction that occurs when

learners and their interlocutors anticipate,

perceive, or experience difficulties in message

comprehensibility”.

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Method

• a mixed-methods approach including both

qualitative and quantitative data analyses

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Participants

• 60 freshman students - Department of Foreign Language

Education, Middle East Technical University

• Freshman students were divided into four sections

regardless of their gender, academic achievement or any

other variables.

• 18-20 years old

• Not familiar with SL before the class

• Advanced Reading and Writing I (a must course during the

Fall Term)

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Content of the course

• Related to reading and writing skills

• SL was used for writing activities (it was used

for a reading activity only in the first session)

• Only paragraph types were introduced (No

essay)

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Data Collection Procedure

• A classroom (Classroom B) was used as

the home place of the course.

• Activities started there and sometimes

students were asked teleport different

landmarks.

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Classrrom B

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Data Collection Procedure

• 1 Reading text (for the first session )

• 6 Writing tasks (about different types of paragraphs)

• Descriptive Paragraph (This activity was an individual activity and

thus there was no interaction among the students.)

• Classification Paragraph

• Process Analysis Paragraph

• Narrative Paragraph

• Compare and Contrast Paragraph

• Argumentative Paragraph

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Activities (Descriptive Paragraph)

• Some landmarks were predetermined

• They were asked to teleport to these

previously determined landmarks and to take

some snapshots.

• After that they wrote a descriptive paragraph

to publish on their blogs.

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Activities (Classification Paragraph)

• Students were asked to teleport to some places

and interview with people in those places

• Students interviewed about the reason why

those people were using SL

• They categorized the users of SL after discussing

it with their classmates

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Activities (Process Analysis Paragraph)

• Students created groups with their classmates

and started to build houses in Classroom B

• Students were told how to build some basic

objects (walls, doors)

• After they finished building, they wrote a

paragraph describing the process they completed

step by step

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Activities (Narrative Paragraph)

• SL used as a discussion platform

• Students were divided into groups and

they were given prompts for a story and

each group wrote a story including the

prompts they were given.

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Activities (Narrative, cont.)

• For example, the first group chose

• “A homeless child” as their character

• “An expensive restaurant” as the setting

• “Late at night” as the time

• “A secret needs to be confessed to someone

else” as the situation

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Activities (Compare and Contrast)

• Students were asked to choose topics from the

board built in Classroom B

• They were grouped according to their compare

and contrast paragraph topics and they discussed

on the similarities and differences of the given

situations

• Finally, they published their paragraphs on their

blogs

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Activities (Argumentative Paragraph)

• Two message boards were created in SL and

students received the argumentative paragraph

topics touching the objects.

• After they had chosen their topics, they discussed

these topics with their classmates in groups

• They determined pros and cons of the argument

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Data Collection Procedure (Cont.)

• During the tasks, chat logs were stored on

students‟ computers; and they sent it via e-mail.

• Screen was recorded by means of Camtasia.

• In order to capture the whole class view, an

account was created called “Observer Elton” and

the screen was recorded from his point of view.

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Data Analysis

A taxonomy prepared by Akayoglu &

Altun, 2008 was used to analyze the

data.

It was previously modified from the

taxonomy prepared by Patterson and

Trabaldo (2006)

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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life21

The name of the function

Clarification request Vocabulary request

Confirmation check Comprehension check

Correction Reply comprehension

Elaboration Elaboration request

Reply clarification Reply elaboration

Reply confirmation Vocabulary check

Reply vocabulary Confirmation


Data Analysis

The collected data imported into the

software Hyper Research Qualitative

Analysis Tool (version 5.2).

The codes were applied to the chat logs

and the data was analyzed.

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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life23


NoM Functions #

Confirmation 277

Elaboration Request 201

Clarification Request 158

Elaboration 98

Reply Elaboration 96

Confirmation Check 78

Reply Clarification 70

Reply Confirmation 63

Correction 58

Vocabulary Request 10

Comprehension Check 8

Reply Vocabulary 5

Reply Comprehension 3

Vocabulary Check 1

Total 112624


Conclusions

• It was found that the most frequently

used NoM functions were confirmation,

elaboration request and clarification

request; and the least frequently used

functions were reply vocabulary, reply

comprehension and vocabulary check.

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• It was notable that the findings of this study

is in parallel with the studies carried out

before (Sotillo, 2000; Jepson, 2005;

Patterson and Trabaldo, 2006; Akayoglu and

Altun, 2008) on the NoM functions in text

based computer mediated communication.

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Recommendation

• This study might help

• researchers studying on discourse analysis of

online environments

• teachers and students in terms of creating a

greater awareness of these environments

• teachers to take the mostly used functions into

consideration while preparing courses

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References

• Akayoğlu, S., & Altun, A. (2008). The functions of negotiation of meaning in

text based CMC. In R. V. Marriott & P. L. Torres (Eds.), Research on E-Learning

Methodologies for Language Acquisition (pp. 302-317). New York: Information

Science Reference.

• Chappelle, C. A. (2004). Technology and Second Language Learning:

Expanding Methods and Agenda. System 32(4): 593-601.

• Jepson, K. (2005). Conversations - and Negotiated Interaction - in Text and

Voice Chat Rooms. Language Learning & Technology 9(3): 79-98.

• Patterson P., S. Trabaldo (2006). Negotiating for Meaning Across Borders with

CMC. Teaching English with Technology. 6(2).

• Sotillo, S. M. (2000). Discourse Functions and Syntactic Complexity in

Synchronous and Asynchronous Communication. Language Learning &

Technology 4(1): 82-119.

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• Res. Assist. Sedat Akayoglu

• Middle East Technical University

Faculty of Education

Department of Foreign Language Education

Ankara, Turkey

[email protected]

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