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.