2010년 2월 2일 화요일
Negotiation in Cyberspace
I just have several issues about CMC chatting with NNSs. The proposition revealed through the Pellettieri's article is that the development of grammatical competence can be improved by negotiation of meaning that occur in online chatting. Of course, before this kind of chatting is incorporated in classroom activities, it should iron out potential factors that are expected to matter such as level of students' FL, task types, the goal of chatting actitivies. etc. With that in case, however, CMC chatting has to encouter problems that actually take place. I agree that students are provided with chances to hypothetically "open their mouths" and "say something" online, which ultimately put them in a situation where they notice the "hole" of their linguistic repertoir and fill it drawing on other sources. However, it is very slow and time-consuming. Nobody can guerantee when they would recognize their mistakes and how much noticing would work. To obtain a certain amount of input that can be obtained in one-hour class, they would have to be put in an online space for 3 hours. What is worse, NNSs are not likely to correct the grammatical mistakes commited by other NNSs unless those mistakes threaten the existing communication. Sometimes it is better for students to get input from instructors directly. I am only talking about the chatting between NNSs who are particulary beginners. It may be different if they are advanced enough to get things cross in FL; however, they are still being exposed to where grammatical mistakes are prevalent. I think I have been long-winded on this but the gist of this writing is that grammatical competence shouldn't be (or cannot be) the focus of the chatting.
피드 구독하기:
댓글 (Atom)
you have some interesting observations--the next step would be to try to test out your hypothesis with an experiment!
답글삭제It does seem hard to believe that NNS-NNS interaction (and it doesn't really matter I guess it's chatting via internet or face-to-face conversation) can help learners with anything, and it would be interesting to see a study done on the beginners, but somehow NNS-NNS interaction does help those NNS. This kind of activity would not help only if both participants are not interested in communicating or using the FL at all. It is the fact that output has to be produced and paid attention to, and it is the fact that the first NNS somehow has to convey his/her comprehensible message to the second NNS. There are studies showing that NNS-NNS communication does not lower/make worse any linguistic abilities of learners. And if we're talking about learning a FL in a classroom environment, there is no danger that learners would only be exposed to the language of their own level.
답글삭제I think the main purpose of chatting online is to develop learners' communicative competence. I would say meaning rather than form shoule be focused. However, learners can also develop their grammatical competence in that they notice their grammar mistakes much more easily than they chat face to face. Technology and Internet are just tools that facilitate learning process. What should be focused, to a large extent, depends on learners' language levels and the main learning goal. The chatting can be grammar-oriented, or fluency-demanded. If learners can notice their grammatical errors and correct by themselves when chatting online, they might not make the same grammatical error when communicating face to face. So, my point is the foci of chatting online are various. Maybe grammatical competence is not the focus, but learners can still develop it unconsciously while chatting online.
답글삭제I don't think a student will get everything he/she needs from chatting, whether it's NS-NNS or NNS-NNS. Soo Min, do you think that NNS-NNS face-to-face conversations (such as those that occur in the communicative language teaching classroom) do the same damage (or fail to provide benefit) like chatting does?
답글삭제