The Dynamic Interplay between Context and the Language Learner by Jim King

Author:Jim King
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781137457141
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2016-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

Excerpt 7.5

Overview of the three cases

Topic affordances and adaptation

Through the analyses of the three cases above, we tried to identify the factors that could have contributed to creating the talk and silence patterns observed in each session. Although multiple factors interacted to give rise to the observed phenomena, topic was definitely a vitally important factor that determined the flow of the discourse. We discussed above how familiar and relevant each student found each topic resulted in lengthier or shorter utterances. However, we also suggested that a topic’s nature itself elicits longer or shorter responses; that is, some topics require explanations, while with others a student can contribute an opinion with a short response. We call this aspect of topics topic affordances. Further, comparing the three cases, we noticed that there was a tendency for students to adapt to other students’ response patterns. When a student starts by explaining each character in her name, then the second student follows suit, and this goes on as predicted by communication accommodation theory (Giles, Coupland & Coupland, 1991), which discusses accommodation and adaptation among communication partners in many aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication behaviours. In the three cases above, we see a good example of co-adaptation of individuals as systems within CDST.

Research question 2

The second research question was: How do individual learners account for their (non)participation in class discussions resulting in the observed talk and silence patterns? To address this research question, we analysed the reflection sheets written by the students in Japanese at the end of each session, including the three focal sessions. To understand what led (or did not lead) to their participation, we reviewed how the learners perceived their (non)participation and how they accounted for the reasons why they could (or could not) participate.

The participants’ accounts of why they could (or could not) participate in a particular session during the 12 sessions were coded, and these codes were subsequently abstracted to categories: six relating to why they could participate, and seven for why they could not (see also Yashima & Ikeda, in preparation). These are shown in Table 7.4 along with the frequency of occurrence in percentage terms in each category over the semester.

The results indicate that topic was by far the most frequently mentioned reason why the students could or could not participate in the discussion, while the second most frequently mentioned reason for non-participation was anxiety. Among reasons why they could participate, social collective factors or friends’ and groups’ influence came in second following interesting and relevant topic. Let us now review what the learners wrote at the end of each focal session, comparing the frequency of such comments in each category in each of the three sessions with those for the whole semester shown in Table 7.4.

Table 7.4 Reasons for participation or non-participation in discussion

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