Negotiating meaning in a foreign language

In this context, the goals of the project are:

1. To what extent are non-native speakers present on forum discussions? What role do they take? How does this compare with native speakers’ presence and assumed roles?
2. To what extent do non-native speakers negotiate meaning with a view to resolve a misunderstanding due to language problems vs. content-related and cognitive problems?
3. To what extent do non-native speakers take part in the richer content-based interactions that can potentially give rise to socio-cognitive conflicts and learning?
4. To what extent does language proficiency impact non-native speakers’ online presence, the range of roles they assume, the type of discussions they are involved in, and the types of posts they write?

To answer these questions, a large and expanding corpus of forum posts is being built based on all LouvainX MOOCs in the fields of humanities and social sciences that may feature relevant discussion and conflict, enriched with metadata from surveys supplied to learners. This invaluable dataset makes it possible for us to use both quantitative and qualitative methodologies to answer our four research questions.

Expected contributions in the area of Linguistics

Combined with the findings of the other subprojects, our results will be used to formulate recommendations for increased interactivity in the LouvainX MOOCs and all MOOCs in general, as well as inform the field on differences between native and non-native speakers within MOOC forums. Beyond academic achievement, we aim to reach out to teachers and help them understand the needs of their non-native learners through the conclusions of our analyses.

International conferences

Contact person:

PI: Prof. Magali Paquot, Centre for English Corpus Linguistics