Negotiation for Meaning in Synchronous EFL Chat

摘要

This study examined the nature of the negotiations for meaning that took place in a series of up to twelve online chat sessions between eleven pairs of adult Thai learners of English and English speakers. The study implemented a triangulation approach for data analysis;; data was drawn from chat scripts, interviews, and reflective notes written by the Thai speakers after each chat session. The chat scripts were analyzed for (a) triggers that caused comprehension difficulties, and (b) strategies used by the Thai speakers to solve communication problems. The findings suggested the potential benefit of reflective note writing for morphosyntactic improvement. The morphosyntactic errors were often ignored in the original conversations because they had less effect than lexical triggers on comprehension. However, the Thai speakers reflected on their own interlanguage forms in the saved written conversations while writing their reflective notes and tried to correct them or requested help from other sources. In addition, the Thai speakers used strategies to solve communication problems that did not constitute negotiations of meaning in the classical sense, that is, dictionary consultation, word substitution and avoidance. Pedagogical implications are also included.