Jonathan White

Local Norms in CALL Language Practice

This article presents an investigation into what norms are negotiated in a CALL classrooms by non-native speakers of English who are Internet novices. There is an on-going debate regarding the status of non-native speaker norms. Although there is more and more recognition that they are valid learner targets, native speaker norms are still reported to have the highest status for learners. Internet language use, though, has led to a change in the perception of norms, as communities of non-native speakers can set their own norms over those of native speakers. Data are analysed from academic textchat seminars which show that a community of inexperienced Internet users set their own norms, which go directly against their L1 community cultural norms of respect towards teachers. This paper proposes that it is an affordance of CALL environments that they can do this. This work is further evidence that it is smaller discourse communities that set norms separate from those of larger geo-political national communities.

Exploration of Textual Interactions in CALL Learning Communities: Emerging Research and Opportunities

Exploration of Textual Interactions in CALL Learning Communities : Emerging Research and Opportunities

Topic- and Mode-Sensitive Interaction Strategies: Functions of Ellipsis in Oral Communication

Abstract In this article, we discuss ellipsis as an interactive strategy by analysing the author’s textchat corpus and the VOICE corpus of English as a Lingua Franca. It is found that there were fewer repetitions in the textchat data, and this is explained as a consequence of the textchat mode. Textchat contributions are preserved as long as the chat is active or has been saved, and therefore users can scroll through and review the discussion, compared to the more fleeting nature of oral conversation. As a result, repetition is less necessary. The frequency of other functions identified could be attributed to the topic of discourse. Discussions involve much ellipsis used to develop discourse, although some were self-presentations with repetition used to confirm details. Back-channel support and comments were often low because speakers instead used forms like yeah as supportive utterances.