Telecollaborative Exchanges and Higher Education: Negotiation of Meaning in Interactions between Spanish and Japanese Students (pp. 53-79)
Patricia Guill-Garcia
University of Valencia
Abstract
This article presents an analysis of Negotiation of Meaning (NoM) episodes found in three audiovisual telecollaborative interactions. The study was conducted within the VELCOME project, which carried out a telecollaborative partnership between Japanese (Kwansei Gakuin University) and Spanish (Universitat de València) students. The main objective is to ascertain the presence of NoM episodes in these audiovisual telecollaborative experiences, together with determining the relevance and nature of said episodes.
A mixed methodology is employed in this study, since the quantitative results provide the basis for the subsequent qualitative analysis of the data. The NoM episodes were analysed based on Smith’s (2003, 2005) expansion of the model of Negotiation of Meaning formulated by Varonis and Gass (1985). In addition, the triggers found in the corpus were later on classified into two categories: attended and unattended. Then, so as to determine if students avoid attending mistakes or issues of a specific nature, the attended and unattended triggers were classified into different categories (linguistic, content-related, technical problems, material-related, and overlapping). Finally, the attended triggers were likewise classified as resolved or unresolved as a manner to determine the success of students at solving these breakdowns.The findings obtained suggest that NoM episodes represent a relevant portion of the interactions, emphasising the significance of these breakdowns in communicative processes. Hence, this may imply that further insights into the presence of these NoM episodes and their pedagogical implications are needed, especially in the context of highly communicative activities such as telecollaboration.
Keywords: Collaboration; tertiary education; Negotiation of Meaning; foreign language learning; communication
Bionote
Patricia Guill-Garcia is currently a second-year PhD student in Applied Linguistics at the University of Valencia. She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Studies and a Master’s Degree in Advanced English Studies, which she carried out at the same university. Her research is mainly focused on the area of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, with a specific interest in technology and interaction in the foreign language classroom.
e-mail address: patricia-guill@hotmail.com
References
Atkinson, Maxwell & Heritage, John. 1984. Structures of Social Action. Cambridge: CUP.
Bañados, Emerita. 2006. “A Blended-learning Pedagogical Model for Teaching and Learning EFL Successfully Through an Online Interactive Multimedia Environment”. CALICO Journal, 23(3): 533–550.
Bou-Franch, Patricia. 2001. “Conversation in Foreign Language Instruction”. Language Learning in the Foreign Language Classroom. Eds. Victoria Codina & Eva Alcón. Castellón: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I: 53–73.
Bower, Jack, & Kawaguchi, Saomi. 2011. “Negotiation of Meaning and Corrective Feedback in Japanese/English eTandem”. Language Learning & Technology, 15 (1): 41–71.
Canto, Silvia, Jauregi, Kristi & van den Bergh, Huub. 2013. “Integrating cross-cultural interaction through video-communication and virtual worlds in foreign language teaching programs: Is there an added value?”. ReCALL, 25(1): 105–121. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0958344012000274
Chapelle, Carol A. 2007. “Technology and Second Language Acquistion”. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 27: 98–114.
Chun, Dorothy M. 2011. “Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence through Online Exchanges”. CALICO Journal, 28(2): 392–419.
Chun, Dorothy M. 2016. “The role of technology in SLA research”. Language Learning & Technology, 20(2): 98–115.
Clavel-Arroitia, Begoña. 2019. “Analysis of Telecollaborative Exchanges among Secondary Education Students: Communication Strategies and Negotiation of Meaning”. Porta Linguarum, 31: 97–116.
Clavel-Arroitia, Begoña, & Pennock-Speck, Barry. 2015a. “Analysis of Teacher Roles in Telecollaboration in the Context of a European Funded Project (TILA Project)”. English and American Studies in Spain: New Developments and Trends. Eds. Alberto Lázaro & María Dolores Porto. Servicio de Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares: 189–196.
Clavel-Arroitia, Begoña. & Pennock-Speck, Barry. 2015b. “Telecollaboration in a secondary school context: Negotiation of meaning in English as a lingua franca/Spanish tandem interactions”. @tic. Revista d’innovació educativa, 15: 74–81.
Ellis, Rod. 1999. Learning a second language through interaction. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Freeman, Melissa, & Hall, Jori N. 2012. “The Complexity of Practice: Participant Observation and Values Engagement in a Responsive Evaluation of a Professional Development School Partnership”. American Journal of Evaluation, 33(4): 483–495. https://doi.org/10.1177/1098214012443728
Graham, Charles R. 2006. “Blended Learning Systems – Definition, Current Trends, and Future Directions”. The handbook of blended learning. Global perspectives, local designs. Eds. Curtis J. Bonk & Charles R. Graham. San Francisco: Pfeiffer: 3–21.
Gumperz, John J. & Berenz, Norine (1993). “Transcribing conversational exchanges”. Talking Data: Transcription and Coding in Discourse Research. Eds. Jane A. Edwards and Martin D. Lampert. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum: 91–121.
Guth, Sarah, & Helm, Francesca. 2012. “Developing multiliteracies in ELT through telecollaboration”. ELT Journal, 66 (1): 42–51.
Hoffstaedter, Petra, & Kohn, Kurt. 2015. “Flipping intercultural communication practice: opportunities and challenges for the foreign language classroom”. ANTWERP CALL: 1–6.
Hoffstaedter, Petra, & Kohn, Kurt. n.d. “Tandem and pedagogical lingua franca in intercultural telecollaboration”. Accessed November 25, 2021. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jztj_oVcJ9LMxmUWu78eAg41O-VYMHkI/view
Hrastinski, Stefan, & Keller, Christina. 2007. “Computer‐mediated communication in education: A review of recent research”. Educational Media International, 44(1): 61–77.
Jauregi, Kristi. 2015. “Integrating telecollaboration for intercultural language acquisition at secondary education: lessons learned”. Critical CALL–Proceedings of the 2015 EUROCALL Conference, Padova, Italy. Eds. Francesca Helm, Linda Bradley, Marta Guarda, & Sylvie Thouësny. Dublin: Research-publishing.net: 268–273. http://dx.doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2015.000344
Krashen, Stephen. 1992. Fundamentals of language education. Laredo Publishing Co., California.
Langford, David. 1994. Analysing Talk. London: MacMillan.
Lee, Lina. 2001. “Online interaction: negotiation of meaning and strategies used among learners of Spanish”. ReCALL, 13(2): 232–244.
Lee, Lina. 2006. “A study of native and nonnative speakers’ feedback and responses in Spanish-American networked collaborative interaction”. Internet-Mediated Intercultural Foreign Language Education. Eds. Julie Belz & Stephen Thorne. Boston: Thomson Heinle: 147–176.
Loewen, Shawn. & Sato, Masatoshi. 2018. “Interaction and instructed second language acquisition”. Language Teaching, 51(3): 285–329.
Long, Michael H. 1983. “Native Speaker/non-native Speaker Conversation and the Negotiation of Comprehensible Input”. Applied Linguistics, 4(2): 126–141.
O’Dowd, Robert. 2003. “Understanding the ‘Other Side’: Intercultural Learning in a Spanish-English E-mail Exchange”, Language Learning & Technology, 7(2): 118–144.
O’Dowd, Robert. 2007a. Online intercultural exchange: an introduction for foreign language teachers. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
O’Dowd, Robert. 2007b, “Evaluating the Outcomes of Online Intercultural Exchange”. ELT Journal 4(2): 144–152.
Pennock-Speck, Barry, & Clavel-Arroitia, Begoña. 2018. “Teachers’ perspectives on telecollaboration in secondary school foreign language education”. LEA – Lingue e letterature d’Occidente, 7: 483–509.
Pérez-Cañado, María Luisa. 2010. “Using virtual learning environments and computer-mediated communication to enhance the lexical competence of pre-service English teachers: A quantitative and qualitative study”. Computer Assisted Language Learning, 23(2): 129–150.
Schenker, Theresa. 2012. “Intercultural Competence and Cultural Learning through Telecollaboration”. CALICO Journal, 29(3): 449-470.
Smith, Bryan. 2003. “Computer-mediated negotiated interaction: An expanded model”. The Modern Language Journal, 87(1): 38–57.
Smith, Bryan. 2005. “The relationship between negotiated interaction, learner uptake, and lexical acquisition in task-based computer-mediated communication”. TESOL Quarterly, 39(1): 33–58.
Swain, Merrill. 1985. “Communicative Competence: Some roles of Comprehensible Input and Comprehensible Output in its Development”. Input in second language acquisition. Eds. Susan M. Gass & Carolyn Madden. Rowley, MA: Newbury House: 235–253.
Thorne, Kaye. 2003. Blended Learning: How to Integrate Online & Traditional Learning. London: Kogan Page.
Todd, D. Jick. 1979. “Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods: Triangulation in Action”. Administrative Science Quarterly, 24 (4): 602-611.
Varonis, Evangeline M. & Gass, Susan M. 1985. “Non-native/Non-native Conversations: A Model for Negotiation of Meaning”. Applied Linguistics, 6(1).
Vinagre, Margarita. 2007. “Integrating Tandem Learning in Higher Education”. Online Intercultural Exchange. Ed. Robert O’Dowd. Bristol: Multilingual: 240–249. Matters.https://doi.org/10.21832/9781847690104-014
Vinagre, Margarita. n.d. “VELCOME: Virtual exchange for learning and competence development in EMI classrooms”. Accessed November 16, 2021. https://www.researchgate.net/project/VELCOME-VIRTUAL-EXCHANGE-FOR-LEARNING-AND-COMPETENCE-DEVELOPMENT-IN-EMI-CLASSROOMS
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
