Exploring the Development of Communication Abilities of Intermediate-High Spanish Learners during Online Chatting
Journal Title: JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN LINGUISTICS - Year 14, Vol 4, Issue 2
Abstract
This project explores how intermediate-high learners of Spanish communicate during a real-world style chatting conversation. Further, this study investigates these learners' ability to improve their communication over time as they are moving away from the effort of learning their L2 and toward the effort of applying that knowledge as they use the L2. To explore the use and development of communication abilities, online conversations (chats) were used due to their reduced-pressure contexts (Sun, 2007). Participants were 32 intermediate-high Spanish learners from an advanced grammar course. Learners completed five open topic online chatting sessions. These chats were analyzed for the use of twelve communication tactics: openings, closings, pre-closing devices, direct requests, indirect requests, mitigated speech, circumlocution, follow-up questions, message abandonment, code switching, self-correction, and other-correction. Results found a significant increase in closings and follow-up questions along with a significant decrease in code switching from Chat 1 to Chat 3. Following Chat 3, these significant changes were maintained in Chats 4 and 5 (despite a slight increase in code switching during Chat 5). Additionally, from Chat 1 to Chat 4, significant increases were seen in circumlocution and self-correction and from Chat 1 to Chat 5, a significant decrease was seen for topic abandonment. These results show positive development over time to higher quality conversations with a desire to better maintain and explore topics. Further, learners attempted to remain in Spanish using less code switching and greater circumlocution to convey their meaning. At the same time, learners worked toward greater accuracy through their increased self-corrections.
Authors and Affiliations
Melanie D'Amico
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP651010
- DOI 10.24297/jal.v4i2.2142
- Views 73
- Downloads 0
Multimodal Analysis of Topic Shift in Persian Dyadic Conversations
Conversations play an important role in our daily life. During conversations, we usually talk from topic to topic automatically, smoothly and effortlessly. However, there are sometimes difficulties experienced in establi...
Processing The Difference In Spanish-Language Media In Morocco
Spanish-language media in Morocco represent currently an almost unexplored field of research. The present contribution is centred on some aspects of postcolonial (and even, in a large sense, colonial, since we take into...
The Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina
Huricain Katrina was a natural disaster that had a negative response on the political, economical, sociological and evironmental affects in America. In light of what happened, the levies should be rebuilt to become more...
Losing A Language: A Qualitative Study of Code-Switching Among Taiwanese-Chinese Bilingual Aphasic Speakers with Selective Recovery Pattern
This study aimed to investigate whether Taiwanese-Mandarin bilingual aphasia with selective recovery patterns lose knowledge of the inaccessible language or the control of the language they speak. Four patients were requ...
High literacy level, very low reading culture: an examination of the underlying causes of the Zimbabwean paradox
Zimbabwe currently boasts of one of the highest literacy levels in Africa. Paradoxically, such an encouraging state of affairs is not paralleled with a high reading culture. Instead, the high levels of literacy are undon...