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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
Sedat Akayoglu
16.10.2010
The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
Outline
• The purpose of the study
• Method
• Participants
• Data Collection Procedure
• Data analysis
• Findings
• Conclusion and Recommendations
2
The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
• “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 Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
Method
• a mixed-methods approach including both
qualitative and quantitative data analyses
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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
Classrrom B
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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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
The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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
The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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
The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
• 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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
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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The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life
• Res. Assist. Sedat Akayoglu
• Middle East Technical University
Faculty of Education
Department of Foreign Language Education
Ankara, Turkey
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