Susan Gowans

EFL Communication Strategies in a Virtual World Susan Gowans

This book reports the findings of an exploratory case study examining the communication strategies used between three adult EFL learners and their teacher during meaning-focused conversation tasks in the virtual 3D world of Second Life. The analysis of the session transcript reveals the extent to which the participants employed many of the communication strategies concomitant with face-to-face interactions for effective conversation management. The data also shows that the participants adapted their communication strategies to suit the virtual world platform, thereby overcoming the conversational ambiguities that arose from the absence of paralinguistic signals. Discourse analysis of the transcript offers further insight into power relations, politeness and risk taking and provides signs of sociocultural learning and language development in keeping with Second Language Acquisition theory.