The current study explores the effects of different types of voice-based chat on EFL students’ negotiation of meaning according to proficiency levels. Participants included 123 Korean university students of English. They were divided into two voice-based chat groups: student-student voice-based chat and student-chatterbot voice-based chat. The experiment was administered throughout one semester, 16 weeks. Negotiation of meaning evident in the chats was coded for confirmation check, comprehension check, clarification requests, repetition, and reformulation, and was measured by counting the number of meaning negotiation moves. Important findings were as follows: Firstly, there were significant differences between the first chat and the last chat. The mean frequencies of negotiation moves at all proficiency levels positively changed over time as a result of participating in student-chatterbot voice-based chat. Particulalry, student-chatterbot voice-based chat, as compared to student-student voice-based chat, allowed students to use more negotiation strategies, and the strategies used in the chats also appeared to be different according to the students’ proficiency levels. Lastly, positive perceptions of voice-based chat were observed at all proficiency levels. This study provides empirical evidence to substantiate the effects of voice-based chatterbots in oral interaction. Based on the findings, pedagogical implications are made on the effective implementation of voice-based chatterbots in EFL contexts.

Cho Hye-jin. 2016. “Negotiation of Meaning in Computer-Mediated Communication in Relation to Task Types”. The Sociolinguistic Journal of Korea 24(1). 271~309. The present study aims to explore how negotiation of meaning occurs in a task-based CMC among ESL students. Paired with one another, 18 ESL students were asked to engage in online discussion once a week for 3 weeks in order to complete 3 types of language task: jigsaw, information-gap, and decision-making tasks. The finding shows that only a few examples (11%) contributed to negotiation routines. Twenty-one percent of the negotiation routines were identified as modified interactions. The information-gap task elicited the most negotiation routines. However, what the students perceived was different from the numerical results regarding task types. They reported that the jigsaw was the most intriguing and beneficial task rather than the information-gap. Relatively little negotiation routine can be attributed to learner perceptions of tasks. Learner behaviors such as not asking questions, their eagerness to proceed with the task, and face-saving action were observed as efforts to maintain social communication. Sending segmented messages instead of complete sentences was found as a face-saving action as well.

The study aims to tind out the patterns of negotiation of meaning among non-native speakers in CMC environment, particularly in video conference mode. The two Chinese students and two Korean students participated in 12 video conference sessions and accomplished infonnation gap tasks for 6 weeks. The researchers compared the patterns of negotiation of meaning occurred during video conferencing of two group settings: the same ethnic group and the different ethnic group settings. The research results show that in the same ethnic groups, lexical errors and content triggered most meaning negotiations while content and phonological errors in the different ethnic group settings. There is a clear tendency to indicate non-understanding of a lexical trigger through a local indicator in the same ethnic group while global nonunderstanding indicators caused by phonological and content triggers occurred more frequently in the different ethnic groups. At the response stage, in the same ethnic groups, rephrasing and elaboration were the most commonly used strategies to minimize non-understanding whereas in different ethnic groups, about half the responses fa ll in the category of minimal. The effects of video conferencing as a CMC tool and the advantages of non-native interactions as a way to promote cross-cultural understanding were discussed based on research resu lts.

This study aims to investigate the meaning negotiation process between teachers and students in onJine video conference class. 128 cyber university students participated in the study for 12 weeks. Student survey, recorded video conversation and teachers' weekly comments were analyzed for the study. The research results show that unlike offiine class, the students in video class actively initiated the negotiation of meaning byemploying various negotiation signals. About 64.4% of the negotiation of meaning was initiated by the students. Students used confirmation checks most often, but the types of negotiation signals were varied across the proficiency levels. Teachers used clarification checks more, but utilized their meaning negotiation efforts more as scaffolding to help learners construct their utterances. Teachers also actively utilized text-chat during the video conference to negotiate the meaning and provide the correctional feedback. Both teachers and students used over 1/4 of their conversation for meaning negotiation. In order to elicit more negotiation efforts from the students, teachers need to bring more infonnation gap tasks and diverse topics, and the amount of teacher talk also needs to be controlled. The improvement in students' lead of conversation, turn-taking, andnegotiation efforts over the semester indicate that online video conference class can be an effective tool to promote the students' English speaking fluency.

This study reports on a classroom observation of the language produced by intermediate EFL learners in a Korean university, especially in terms of negotiation of meaning. Negotiation of meaning during task interactions makes certain that task participants receive comprehensible input and produce comprehensible output, which have been argued as essential elements for foreign language learning. Task type is also considered important, with those tasks requiring an exchange of information most likely to facilitate the negotiation of meaning. The purposes of this study was to compare successful meaning negotiation in four types of task(information gap, jigsaw, problem solving, and sharing personal experiences tasks) in terms of qualitative meaning negotiation. For this study, I recorded eight different tasks involving twenty-four students, a total of around five hours of learner interaction. This study showed that qualitative meaning negotiation is more important than the mere evidence of meaning negotiation indices for foreign language development. In terms of task type, open tasks such as problem solving and sharing personal experiences tasks may facilitate a higher qualitative negotiation than information gap tasks and jigsaw tasks, especially in intermediate or advanced English classes.

Researchers in second language acquisition have claimed that the teacher-student setting of the typical L2 classroom may not provide an optimal environment for negotiation of meaning. This claim, however, has been based on quantitative analyses without examination of the actual negotiation process. From a different point of view, namely, a socioconstructivist perspective, this study focuses on how a teacher supported students during negotiations of meaning and how the students contributed to those negotiations in an intermediate ESL classroom. The findings show that the teacher’s scaffolding played a crucial role in constructive negotiations. She continuously checked the students’ levels of comprehension and searched for better ways to resolve comprehension problems. In addition, she assisted the students as they modified their utterances to resolve communication breakdowns. She also offered help by mediating the students’ successful communication between each other. For their part, the students contributed their own scaffolding to assist class members who were having difficulty comprehending and producing language during their negotiations with the teacher. Those findings suggest that collaborative negotiation of meaning between teacher and student in the classroom is rich in learning opportunities.