Negotiating Negotiation

Crossing Frontiers (Kerns et al, 2004) is a metastudy/analysis of the impact of online learning—and specifically, language negotiations—on second language acquisition.  Through the scope of increasingly distance-based CMC (computer-mediated communication) learning environments, the authors look into research that examined negotiation of meaning and metalinguistic awareness.

Brace yourselves: I’m about to venture into copy’n’paste mode, but it’s for good reason.  Here’s a snapshop of four of the more interesting studies/ideas that Kerns et al highlight:

• “Together, these studies suggest that CMC has increasingly complexified and problematized current notions of meaning negotiation… the increasing number of online learner interactions that cross geographical, linguistic, cultural, social, and institutional lines strong calls for more detailed investigation into what Toyoda and Harrison (2002) characterize as the ‘discourse’ level of negotiation of meaning” (Kern at al, p. 246).

• “Online chatting does not necessarily lead to more complex second language writing either. In her study that ferreted out differences between language use in asynchronous and synchronous modes of interaction, Sotillo (2000) compared the discourse functions and syntactic complexity of 25 ESL students’ writing. She found that synchronous discussions elicited conversation that was more similar to face-to- face communication in terms of discourse functions: requests, apologies, complaints, and responses. Asynchronous writing promoted more sustained interactions and greater syntactic complexity” (p. 247).

• “Through the interactive exchange of viewpoints and perspectives, students using Cultura are not “receiving culture” but are involved in a reciprocal construction of one another’s cultures. The cultural literacy that Cultura aims to develop is therefore not transmitted (as in an E. D. Hirsch ‘list’ variety), but rather created and problematized through juxtapositions of materials, interpretations, and responses to interpretations.  This marks a key pedagogical change: The teacher shifts out of the ‘omniscient informant’ role and focuses on structuring, juxtaposing, interpreting, and reflecting on intercultural experiences” (249).

• “Kramsch and Thorne (2002) question the assumption that the type of communication students engage in over global networks (which tends to favor phatic contact and positive presentation of self) naturally supports the development of cross-cultural understanding. Reinterpreting a French–American e-mail exchange (Kern, 2000), they argue that it was not linguistic misunderstandings but a clash in cultural frames and communicative genres that hindered students’ ability to develop common ground for cross-cultural understanding. Specifically, what needed to be negotiated ‘was not only the connotations of words . . . but the stylistic conventions of the genre (formal/informal, edited/unedited, literate/orate), and more importantly the whole discourse system to which that genre belonged’ (p. 98). They argue that demands on communicative competence and negotiation may be quite different on the Internet (Blake, 2000; Kötter, 2003; Pellettieri, 2000 explore some of these differences), and they call for a reassessment of what these terms mean in globalized communication” (pp. 251-252).

Each of those pseudo-abstract blurbs held my interest, but I think that #3 was the most relevant for the purposes of teaching and learning.  The teacher-as-“omniscient informant,” from my perspective, ought to be a dying breed.  Sure, the instructor is the expert/professional, but if you’re going to ask how can I get students engaged?—which every teacher should—then you can’t blah blah blah blah blah them to death. 

Students need to be put front and center.  They need to be the ones talking.  They need to be the ones writing.  They need to be the ones thinking.  They need to be the ones doing.

If teachers—especially in language-based contexts—structure their courses, units, and lessons with this in mind, students will reap more “output time.”  And that’s key for negotiating meaning, whether it’s for the purposes of learning a foreign language or learning the language of academic discourse (which can seem like a foreign language in and of itself).