Vicious vs. virtuous cycles of turn negotiation in American-Japanese telecollaboration: is silence a virtue?

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study analyzes the conversational styles of two dyads who engaged in a semester-long, video-mediated telecollaboration between Japan and America. While one dyad expressed the greatest satisfaction and developed the autonomy to continue the project beyond the curricular requirement, the other dyad expressed the greatest frustration, requiring a pedagogical intervention. To examine how the two dyads’ different experiences could be attributed to turn negotiation patterns, the English portion of the second interaction session was analyzed. The results showed that for the unsuccessful dyad, silence, which was used by the Japanese EFL learner as a contextualization cue, triggered the American student’s hyperexplanation to get the Japanese partner involved in conversation. However, such a high-involvement strategy, only resulted in producing fewer opportunities for the Japanese partner to contribute to the conversation (i.e. vicious cycle). In contrast, successful turn negotiation of the other dyad enabled them to share knowledge schema, improve recipient design, and adjust their speech accordingly. Such personalized speech, in turn, led to the co-construction of conversation (i.e. virtuous cycle). Based on these observations, I conclude that ‘missed communication’ may entrench attribution of negative personal traits unless appropriate scaffolding/intervention is provided.