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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter Mouton June 29, 2018

Negotiation of meaning and negotiation of form in Chinese EFL classroom discourse

  • Qing Wang EMAIL logo

Abstract

In recent decades, numerous empirical studies have been conducted on negotiation of meaning and negotiation of form, but few have focused on examining the distinction between the two negotiation types. This qualitative study aims at distinguishing the two negotiation types by analyzing teacher-student dyadic interaction. Three English teachers and their students from a university in China participated in the study. The classroom interaction between the teachers and their students was recorded over 11 weeks, and the data analyzed for the present study totaled 13 hours and 50 minutes. Results indicate that (1) in terms of teacher intentions, the two negotiation types differ considerably: whereas negotiation of meaning is conversational and didactic in function, negotiation of form is solely didactic; (2) regarding retrieval processes and types of learner uptake, the two negotiation types differ slightly except for when negotiation of meaning is didactic in function. The findings thus reveal some issues to address regarding the function of negotiation of meaning.

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Roy Lyster for his helpful comments on this article. I am grateful to the anonymous IRAL reviewers for their constructive comments on my manuscript, and I am grateful to the teachers who helped me collect data for the study: Wang Yi, Zhang Peng and Wang Zhen.

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Appendix: Transcription Devices

SymbolMeaning
SStudent
TTeacher
CAPITALSEmphasis
-Lengthening
[ ]Overlapping
(.)Pause between one and two seconds
(..)Pause between three and five seconds
(…)Pause over five seconds
?Rising intonation
.Falling intonation
/ /Phonetic Representation
Published Online: 2018-06-29
Published in Print: 2020-06-25

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