1. The Use of Negotiation of Meaning Functions in Second Life Sedat Akayoglu16.10.2010

2. Outline The purpose of the study Method Participants Data Collection Procedure Data analysis Findings Conclusion and Recommendations 2

3. “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) 3

4. 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. 4

5. 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”. 5

6. Method a mixed-methods approach including both qualitative and quantitative data analyses 6

7. 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) 7

8. 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) 8

9. 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. 9

10. Classrrom B 10

11. 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 11

12. 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. 12

13. 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 13

14. 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 14

15. 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. 15

16. 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 16

17. 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 17

18. 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 18

19. 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. 19

20. 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) 20

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22. 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. 22

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25. 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. 25

26. 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. 26

27. 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 27

28. 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. PattersonP., 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. 28

29. Res. Assist. Sedat Akayoglu Middle East Technical UniversityFaculty of EducationDepartment of Foreign Language EducationAnkara, Turkeyakayoglu@metu.edu.tr 29