Text Chat Research Articles

L2 feelings through interaction in a Japanese-English online chat exchange

ABSTRACT Purpose Communication technology is used in diverse ways in our everyday lives. This research aims to fill a gap in research into L2 learner psychology connected with using online communication tools such as messaging platforms. Approach The article focuses on practitioner research into feelings experienced during online L2 text chat. Twenty-one undergraduates studying English as a Foreign Language at a university in Japan, and nineteen Japanese as a Foreign Language undergraduates from a university in Australia participated. In chat sessions, learners had thirty minutes interacting in their first language, and thirty minutes with their second language. Longitudinal, qualitative data was collected over the seven-week exchange through reflective session reports. Findings Analysis uncovered seven positively- and four negatively-valenced feelings experienced through L2 online chat. In both the EFL and JFL groups, mentions of positive amounted to more than double those of negative emotions. These feelings connected with various object-foci such as topics about culture, differences in life experiences, hobbies, linguistic aspects of the L2, L2 identity, chat partners and the chat process itself. Originality The article builds on existing research by adding greater qualitative detail to understandings of feelings emergent through online L2 learning.

Ranking chat logs for crime investigation

Aiming at the needs of criminal investigators to quickly find chat logs related to crime case, a ranking method for chat texts has been proposed. First, query keywords were used to search chat texts, and the feedback texts were divided into relevant texts and irrelevant texts with manual annotation, then non-negative matrix factorization (NMF) was utilized to obtain the implicit semantic relationship of chat texts, finally chat logs could be ranked based on the scores calculated by similarity. Experiments show that the method proposed in this paper can quickly retrieve and get the messages of interest in a lot of chat logs, which can facilitate crime investigation.

A Case Study of Student Experiences of Multi-modal Net-based Language Learning

This article presents the results of a case study of student attitudes toward the development of language skills through net-based language learning, and especially through a multi-modal platform, Adobe Connect. Research has demonstrated that language skills can be developed through different net-based set-ups, but that technology can sometimes be a barrier. An online survey was conducted with students on net-based English courses at a Swedish university. Informants reported that they had positive experiences of such learning, but that they felt that speaking skills were difficult to develop, often due to connection problems. Listening was a particular problem during so-called hybrid seminars, where net-based students interacted with campus students. Informants felt that the main pedagogical issues for net-based language learning were the attitudes of the instructors and students. The set-up of courses can help develop spoken language skills, including interaction, but also the willingness of fellow students to interact orally rather than through text chat is important.

A Comparative Study of the Interpretations of Emojis in Between U.S. and Chinese Users

In recent years, Emojis have permeated online communications. They constantly show up in text messages, chats and emails, playing a significant role in business and daily interaction. Although designed to replace language text and to convert some universal emotions through icons, there are no rules governing people how to correctly define the sentiments behind them. Therefore, users with different cultural background may interpret emojis differently. This have often led to misinterpretation and miscommunication from different user groups. This study examines the correlation of the sentiments felt from a group of U.S. users versus a group of Chinese users by having them rate their sentiments from positive to negative for the top 15 most popularly used emojis. The survey was circulated in U.S. and China respectively and received 402 responses. The study weighted the scores of both user groups and analyzed the reasons behind the misalignment, including the structure of the icon, the local culture background etc. It founded that of the 15 emojis tested, over 60% of them had major or minor interpretation differences between the U.S. users and the Chinese users, and only 40% were aligned. The final conclusion was that the sentiment that the user intended to send with an emoji may not be received to the degree that it was intended among U.S. and Chinese users.

CMC on Group Collaboration: The Process and Barriers Between Two Cultures

In an increasingly online world, the ability to use Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC) and communicate effectively with people from other cultures are key to success. The purpose of this study is to examine how young generation with different cultural background are doing the communication process (specifically in creating messages, choosing the communication device and choosing the time mode) using CMC medium, and how they are dealing with the possible barriers that could hinder the collaboration effectiveness. We refer the cultural differences on cultural dimensions by Hofstede. This research uses qualitative with a case-study method and analyzed multiple sources of evidence such as recorded correspondence, logbook, focus group discussions, direct observation and experts’ interview for data collection. Participants are 30 Journalism students from Pelita Harapan University (UPH) Indonesia and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Australia who join a collaboration project from October – November 2018. This study shows that Individualism, Masculinity and Power Distance cultural dimensions really affect how they communicate to each other. The students use mostly asynchronous communication such as chat text, email and google doc for their communication tools because the available technologies especially internet connections did not yet support this group collaboration using CMC optimally. This project cannot be finalized without CMC however some barriers needed to be overcome to increase the effectiveness of future collaboration.

FAKTOR PENGHAMBAT DALAM PELAKSANAAN KONSELING ONLINE BERBASIS TEKS (CHAT)

In the current era of globalization, all technologies are developing rapidly and sophisticated. This is used by all individuals well in helping their work, as well as the world of Guidance and Counseling is greatly helped by the existence of increasingly sophisticated technology. There is no need to worry about distance constraints, because counselors and counselees can still do counseling through the media called online counseling. One of them is through text (chat), this media is very easy to do counselors and counselees because they only communicate by writing or making text. Media chat also helps counselees who have a shy or awkward attitude when meeting directly with a counselor. They only type in a text form to the counselor about the problem. Similar to general counseling, online counseling through media chat also has obstacles in its implementation. This inhibiting factor can be caused by the counselor and his own counselor. The inhibiting factor of the counselor itself is the lack of special knowledge or abilities that the counselor has in communicating through media chat and the lack of skills in writing texts to avoid misunderstandings with the counselee. Likewise counselees such as lack of understanding in using technology also become one of the inhibiting factors. The reason for this article is to find out more about some of the inhibiting factors in counseling through media chat.

Interactional competence in L2 text-chat interactions: First-idea proffering in task openings

This study explores the opening phase of online task-based text-chat interactions between second language (L2) learners of English at three proficiency levels through a Conversation Analysis (CA) inspired, moment-by-moment analysis, and relates differences between groups to participants' differential levels of interactional competence. We focus on sequential environments where the first idea potentially leading to an accomplishment of a decision-making task is proffered, as well as any preliminaries (e.g., greeting) prior to the first-idea proffer. We found that participants oriented to a normative expectation of proffering ideas for task accomplishment early on, regardless of proficiency. Higher-level learners' first-idea proffers were more likely to occur in the form of a response to a soliciting move, whereas lower-level learners’ idea-proffers were less responsive. While preliminaries were overall not common, their production increased with proficiency level and only high-level learners produced extended preliminary sequences. As proficiency increased, linguistic formats for first idea-proffers also showed greater linguistic variety whereas lower-level learners exclusively relied on a narrow range of performative lexico-syntactic forms such as I want X constructions. The findings provide insight in how L2 learners deploy their interactional competence to open work on tasks in text chat.

Trusting Virtual Agents

We present artificial intelligent (AI) agents that act as interviewers to engage with a user in a text-based conversation and automatically infer the user's personality traits. We investigate how the personality of an AI interviewer and the inferred personality of a user influences the user's trust in the AI interviewer from two perspectives: the user's willingness to confide in and listen to an AI interviewer. We have developed two AI interviewers with distinct personalities and deployed them in a series of real-world events. We present findings from four such deployments involving 1,280 users, including 606 actual job applicants. Notably, users are more willing to confide in and listen to an AI interviewer with a serious, assertive personality in a high-stakes job interview. Moreover, users’ personality traits, inferred from their chat text, along with interview context, influence their perception of and their willingness to confide in and listen to an AI interviewer. Finally, we discuss the design implications of our work on building hyper-personalized, intelligent agents.

Virtual worlds and language learning

Technology has made an invaluable contribution to foreign language (FL) teaching, particularly so in recent years. The advanced technical capabilities offered by digital games, including voice and text chat, take the use of computer-mediated communication in language learning one step further, allowing for remote, anonymous and situated learner interaction. This article presents an overview on how virtual worlds (VWs) are being used for educational purposes and for FL teaching in particular. A literature review on existing research has been included, covering areas such as FL interaction, impact on affective variables and attitudes towards the use of these environments. Special attention will be devoted to how VW interaction may affect students’ anxiety, motivation and self-efficacy beliefs. Finally, teacher perceptions will be explored through the data collected among 179 secondary school FL teachers participating in the EU-funded TeCoLa project (‘Pedagogical differentiation through telecollaboration and gaming for intercultural and content integrated language teaching’).

Alignment During Synchronous Video Versus Written Chat L2 Interactions: A Methodological Exploration

AbstractConversational alignment (i.e., the automatic tendency of interactants to reuse each other's morphosyntactic structures and lexical choices in natural dialogue) is a well-researched phenomenon in native (Pickering & Ferreira, 2008) and to a smaller extent in second language (L2) speakers (Jackson, 2018) as confirmed by many highly controlled lab-based experimental studies investigating face-to-face oral interaction. Only a few studies have explored alignment in more naturally occurring L2 interactions (e.g., Dao, Trofimovich, & Kennedy, 2018), some of them extending the context to written computer-mediated communication (SCMC) (e.g., Michel & Smith, 2018).The current study aimed to address this gap by taking a closer look at alignment in L2 conversations mediated by two different types of SCMC (videoconference vs. text chat). We explored lexical as well as structural alignment in three target languages (Chinese, French, and German) involving interactional partners of different status (L2 peer, L1 peer, and L1 tutor).Results revealed that lexical and structural alignment are both present and observable in different SCMC contexts. From a methodological point of view, we discuss how different analyses suit the data generated by the affordances of the different SCMC contexts in the target languages and argue for a more dynamic and pervasive perspective on interaction.

What drives alignment during text chat with a peer vs. a tutor? Insights from cued interviews and eye-tracking

Alignment refers to the largely automatic tendency of interlocutors to re-use each other’s language patterns in the course of authentic interaction (Pickering & Garrod, 2004). However, little is known about alignment during L2 interaction, where recycling of a partner’s language - in contrast to L1 conversations - might be a more conscious, strategic behaviour (Costa, Pickering & Sorace, 2008). In this paper we explore attention and awareness of L2 speakers to their partner’s language use during digitally mediated communication (text chat) and see whether and how they re-use each other’s lexical phrases. Twelve English-L1 learners of L2 German participated in a task-based text chat discussion. Participants communicated under two different conditions: with a native speaker tutor vs. with a language learning peer. Three data sources were scrutinised: (1) chatlog analyses looked for re-used lexical phrases; (2) eye-gaze fixations on re-used text served as measures of attention; (3) awareness of language re-use was evaluated by means of cued interviews. Results reveal both unaware and strategic alignment; more of it happening in the tutor chat; and more advanced students being less inclined to copy their partner. Findings will be discussed in light of Costa et al.’s (2008) framework on L2 alignment.

Toward an Improved Understanding of Online Customer Service Delivery to Millennials

Firms need to deliver high quality customer service to retain clients and improve performance. For online companies, a key customer segment is the highly technologically skilled millennials. This study seeks to better understand millennials’ preference for text (chat) or talk (call) mediums when receiving customer service during the online buying process. Millennial focus group participants found chat interactions best for simple questions, handling account details, gathering information, and securing a transcript. Calling was viewed as superior for sensitive information, complex questions, and when assessing the agent’s voice tone. Discussion of the findings, limitations, and suggestions for future research are provided.

Influence of Anonymity in Text Chat on Consensus Building between Acquaintances

Influence of Anonymity in Text Chat on Consensus Building between Acquaintances

Forensic Tool Comparison on Instagram Digital Evidence Based on Android with The NIST Method

The growth of Android-based smartphone users to access media in communicating using Instagram social media is very fast. Activities are carried out when using Instagram social media in communicating to share information such as sending chat texts and pictures. A large number of Instagram users make this application vulnerable to abuse of Instagram such as pornography crimes from Instagram users. This case can be forensic to get digital evidence in the form of chat text and pictures from Instagram messenger is a feature of Instagram. The investigation in this study uses the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) method which provides several stages of collecting, examining, analyzing, reporting while forensic tools use forensic oxygen and axiom magnets. The results of the recovery and comparison of data result using Oxygen forensics and Axiom Magnets obtained digital evidence in the form of data in the form of images and chat. The data obtained by Magnet Axiom is 100% while forensic oxygen is 84%. These data are the results of the performance of both forensic applications in obtaining digital evidence that has been deleted from the Instagram messenger.

Effects of Synchronous CSCL on Perceived Social Presence, Satisfaction, and Learning: Text versus Video Chat Among EFL Learners

Effects of Synchronous CSCL on Perceived Social Presence, Satisfaction, and Learning: Text versus Video Chat Among EFL Learners

Team Decision Making in Operations Management

1. Problem definition: This paper studies how teams make operational decisions in two canonical settings: standalone Newsvendor inventory decisions (tactical decision-making) and Newsvendor under information sharing (strategic decision-making). 2. Academic / Practical Relevance: Team decision-making, while being prevalent in practice, has been rarely studied in operational contexts. Past research in behavioral economics and psychology uses simple, abstract decision tasks and show that teams generally outperform individuals. However, it is less clear whether the results extend to practical yet more complex operational settings. Answering this will help researchers and practitioners understand how teams will behave in operational settings and, subsequently, whether team decision-making should be employed. 3. Methodology: We employ behavioral and experimental studies, including text chat analysis to explore teams' decision-making mechanism. 4. Results: We find that whether teams will perform differently from individuals depends critically on the team decision mechanism, as reflected in what team members find compelling in intra-team chats. When playing the role of the supplier, both in the standalone Newsvendor setting and the information sharing game, teams find multiple (potentially conflicting) arguments compelling which pull team decisions in different directions, and overall, the teams do not outperform individuals. By contrast, as the retailer in the information sharing game, the compelling argument points to the direction of self-interest and team retailers outperform individual retailers in terms of earning profits. 5. Managerial Implications: Our findings suggest that when companies consider whether to implement team decision-making, it is important to think carefully about whether and which compelling argument(s) will emerge during team discussions, and whether they promote the outcome the company wants. Careful behavioral studies are useful to study this, and chat analysis proves to be a powerful tool in studying teams' decision mechanism.

Negotiation for Meaning Routines in Audio SCMC Interactions

Negotiation for meaning, in response to instances of non-understanding, plays an important role in SLA. Meaning negotiation routines in face-to-face classroom interactions have been identified by Varonis and Gass. Smith expands the model to adapt it to text chat CMC environments. In the past decade, synchronous audio CMC has become commonly used for online language teaching, but its affordances are different from text chat CMC. Therefore, it is necessary to examine what meaning negotiation routines are in language learners' oral interactions in this new online learning environment. In this study, participants were invited to complete two information gap tasks in which target lexical items were embedded to elicit learners' negotiation for meaning and then they participated in a stimulated recall interview. Based on the analysis of students' oral interactions in synchronous audio CMC, the authors propose two new possible stages in negotiation for meaning routines and demonstrate how different modes of communication can affect language learning online.

Information and Communication Technologies: Views of Canadian College Students and “Excellent” Professors

We explored students’ perspectives about their professors’ use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) and compared these to the views of professors deemed by their students to be excellent in their use of ICTs. 311 students completed an online questionnaire and nominated up to three of their professors who used technology in a way that worked well for them. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 114 of the nominated professors, who also completed a checklist of technologies used in their teaching. There are some technologies that students said worked well for them that not many professors used in their teaching, such as online tests / quizzes, podcasts, and clickers. However, there were some technologies that both students and professors agreed did not facilitate learning, such as digital text books, blogs and chat rooms. Finally, there was also agreement among professors and students about technologies that did help with learning, such as e-mails, videos and online submission of assignments.Both student and professor perspectives need to be considered when evaluating what technologies work in teaching. Future research should examine why students prefer certain technologies. In addition, reasons for the discrepancies between professors and student views needs further investigation.

Synchronous and asynchronous teacher electronic feedback and learner uptake in ESL composition

We know little about how teacher feedback and student revisions are influenced when feedback is given electronically. This study contributes to a better understanding of teacher electronic feedback (TEF) in second language writing by investigating its effectiveness in face-to-face and online ESL writing classes in which TEF was offered asynchronously, as Word comments and track changes in electronic drafts, as well as in synchronous text chats between teachers and students. TEF was extracted from 93 drafts written by 64 students and 93 chats in which they conferenced with their teachers. Students’ perceptions about TEF were then solicited via a survey. Additionally, the three participating teachers were interviewed about their use of TEF. Findings show that most TEF was successfully implemented or attempted, and that it was focused on content. Important conclusions are that TEF is effective, and synchronous TEF effectively reinforces asynchronous TEF.

The relationship between willingness to communicate and social presence in an online English language course

Vietnamese high school students have few opportunities to use English outside class and they are often reluctant to speak in class. This paper describes and explains the students’ willingness to communicate (wtc) and relates this to varied perceptions of social presence. Eighteen high school students in Vietnam took a six-week online course using Facebook and Skype. They were interviewed individually before and after the course about their experiences, focusing on their perceptions of their own wtc. The results show that the students were more willing to use English spontaneously in the online environment in contexts where they perceived that they had less social presence. Text and audio chat were felt to be less face threatening than video chat, and consequently, students were more willing to speak in conditions of lower social presence. It can be concluded that the more social presence students felt they had in the online environment, the less their wtc. This was true for both synchronous and asynchronous online environments. Allowing students to control their social presence in online communication can embolden shy students and increase their WTC.