Talk About Texts: Interactional Literacies in Second Language Learning

Talk about Texts: Interactional Literacies in Second Language Learning

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Timlin, Chelsea Allison

Publisher The University of Arizona.

Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction, presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.

Download date 29/09/2021 17:40:31

Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/642150 TALK ABOUT TEXTS:

INTERACTIONAL LITERACIES IN SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

Chelsea Timlin

______

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

GRADUATE INTERDISCIPLINARY PROGRAM

IN SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION AND TEACHING

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements

For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2020

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by: titled:

and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

______Date:

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College.

I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

______Date:

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Many incredible people contributed to the completion of this project. While thanking them with words on a page isn’t enough, I want to acknowledge them here. I could not have asked for a more supportive, empathetic, and uplifting committee chair, Chantelle Warner. Chantelle, you guided me through the creation, implementation, and completion of this project, as well as over the many speedbumps that life threw (and sometimes pelted) at me during this process, and for this I cannot find the words that will express the extent of my gratitude. Thank you for all the time you spent reading drafts, writing feedback, meeting with me over Skype while children and pugs made distracting noises in the background, responding to my panicked emails, and for reminding me to step back when necessary. Thank you for your inspiring mentorship. To Beatrice Dupuy and Jon Reinhardt, I am incredibly grateful for the trust and guidance I found in both of you as committee members while developing this project. Thank you for your confidence in me and for pushing me to consider how to take my work beyond what I initially envisioned. A number of graduate student colleagues and friends contributed to the successful completion of this project as well. To Sina Colditz, thank you for your openness to trying something completely new in your intermediate German classroom and for the time and energy you spent bringing these pedagogical plans to life for the first time. To Laurie Clark, I am so grateful that you joined us for the second go-around of the simulations. Thank you for your creativity, insight and genuine interest in seeing the implementation of this project through. And to all the graduate assistants and associates in German Studies who listened to my long descriptions of the project, offered feedback and provided moral support – thank you for making the Department a positive, encouraging home-away-from-home. I also want to acknowledge the sincerity and genuine care that came from the Program Coordinators in SLAT, Kelley Merriam Castro and Debbie Shon. Thank you both for taking the time to meet with me in person and to respond to my emails with nothing but encouragement, positivity, and guidance. There have been so many others who have contributed to my doctoral experience in Second Language Acquisition and Teaching at the University of Arizona, and to all of you, I say thank you.

DEDICATION

For Steven-- Life gave us very rotten lemons during this dissertation-writing experience. I’m not sure that what we made was lemonade (I sure wouldn’t drink it), but our son turned out awfully sweet.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES ...... 8 ABSTRACT ...... 9 INTRODUCTION ...... 10 Conceptual Frameworks ...... 11 Multiliteracies Pedagogies ...... 11 Qualifying Experiencing ...... 13 The Current Project ...... 15 Outline of the Dissertation ...... 16 CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 19 Introduction ...... 19 Recognizing Complexity in Communication ...... 20 Language as Structure ...... 20 Language as Communication ...... 21 Recognizing Complexity through Technology ...... 23 Multiliteracies: A Response to Complexity ...... 26 Notions of Literacy ...... 27 Digital Literacies ...... 36 Recent Critiques within Multiliteracies ...... 36 The Current Study: Experiencing Complexity through Interaction ...... 38 CHAPTER 2: METHODS ...... 40 Introduction ...... 40 Positionality ...... 41 Instructional Context ...... 42 Fairy Tales in the German Classroom ...... 43 Intermediate German ...... 45 A Multiliteracies-Informed Curriculum ...... 46 The Pedagogical Intervention: A Multiliteracies-Based Fairytale Simulation ...... 48 Data Collection ...... 57 Participants ...... 57 Face-to-Face Interaction Activities ...... 59 Digital Interaction Activities ...... 68 Data Analysis Frameworks and Methods ...... 72 Conversation Analysis ...... 72 6

Coding Face-to-Face and Digital Interactional Language ...... 75 Conclusions ...... 76 CHAPTER 3: CO-CONSTRUCTED EXPERIENCING THROUGH FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTION ...... 78 Introduction ...... 78 Analyzing Experiencing through Face-to-Face Interaction ...... 79 Findings ...... 81 Interactions at a Glance ...... 81 Contextualizing the Analysis of Interactional Moves ...... 89 Discussion ...... 116 The Interactional Face of Experiencing Texts ...... 117 Blurring Lines between Experiencing, Analyzing, Conceptualizing, and Applying .. 118 Interactional Affordances of Experiencing ...... 120 Conclusions ...... 121 CHAPTER 4: EXPERIENCING THROUGH INTERACTION IN DIGITAL SPACES .. 123 Introduction ...... 123 Pedagogical Context ...... 124 Prompts for Experiencing and Beyond ...... 125 Analyzing Interactional Literacies in Digital Spaces ...... 126 Illustrating Interaction in Digital Spaces ...... 129 Discussion ...... 152 Experiencing Texts through Interaction in Digital Spaces ...... 153 Comparing and Contrasting Digital and Face-to-Face Interaction ...... 156 Digital Interaction as Entry into Other Knowledge Processes ...... 159 Conclusions ...... 161 CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY AND RESEARCH ...... 164 Introduction ...... 164 Summary of Findings ...... 164 Contributions to Multiliteracies Pedagogy ...... 167 Scaffolding Interaction with Multiliteracies Pedagogy ...... 167 Future Directions for Research ...... 169 Considerations for Observing and Analyzing Face-to-Face Interaction ...... 170 The Role of Evolving Interactional Technologies ...... 171 Research on Multiliteracies Pedagogy ...... 173 Conclusions ...... 174 7

APPENDICES ...... 176 Appendix A: Simulation-Week Lesson Plans, Fall 2018 ...... 176 Appendix B: Face-to-Face Interaction Assignment Descriptions ...... 190 Appendix C: Digital Interaction Assignment Descriptions ...... 192 Appendix D: Post-Simulation Reflection Prompts ...... 194 Appendix E: Conversation Analysis Transcription Conventions ...... 196 REFERENCES ...... 197

LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES Tables Table 1: Summary of Simulation Activities……………………………………………………..50 Table 2: Book Club Prompt Questions…………………………………………………………..61 Table 3: Google Hangouts #1 Prompt Questions………………………………………………..68 Table 4: Google Hangouts #2 Prompt Questions………………………………………………..70 Table 5: Coding System………………………………………………………………………….75 Table 6: Conversation Analysis Coding System………………………………………………...80 Table 7: Codes for Digital Interaction Data Analysis ………………………………………….125

Figures Figure 1: Code Frequencies Across Audio-Recorded Face-to-Face Interactions………………...83 Figure 2: Coded Segments in Google Hangouts Transcripts……………………………...…….128

ABSTRACT

Experiencing activities, or those that emphasize learners’ interests, prior experiences, and existing knowledge in new and familiar meaning-making experiences with texts, have been found to dominate multiliteracies second language instruction, often at the expense of activities that involve conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. Recent analyses and critiques of the multiliteracies framework reveal several implications of this shortcoming, including the tendency to mirror communicative language teaching in the overemphasis of experiencing; that is, learning activities that rely on learners’ personalization of the content and often limit meaning making to evaluative language use, a propensity to overlook the spontaneous and improvised nature of literacies practice in personal and educational spaces, as well as inconsistencies in how language instructors understand and implement literacies in second language instruction (Fterniati, 2010; Leander & Boldt, 2013; Menke & Paesani, 2019; Rowland, Canning, Faulhaber, Lingle, & Redgrave, 2014). One suggested approach to investigating and alleviating this imbalance is the in-depth analysis of activities that typically characterize each of the four multiliteracies knowledge processes, particularly those that facilitate interpersonal modes of communication.

This dissertation project implemented three multiliteracies-based simulations in a collegiate-level intermediate German course, during which students adopted a fairytale persona and engaged in interactional activities within a simulated fairytale community. Activities included a hybrid (i.e., online and face-to-face) book club, a public forum, and digital chats during which participants talked with their neighbors about various texts they encountered during the simulations. Data were collected from 14 students enrolled in the course and consisted of 16 audio-recorded and transcribed book club meetings and Google Hangout transcripts. Three major perspectives informed the descriptive analysis of the lesson design and interactions that occurred during the activities: Discourse Analysis, Conversation Analysis (Cameron, 2001; Schiffrin, 1994), and the multiliteracies framework (Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, & Dalley-Trim, 2016; New London Group, 1996). This study sought to respond to three primary questions:

1. What are the interactional affordances of experiencing activities that emphasize interpersonal language use? 2. What kind of language use characterizes interaction that takes place during these experiencing activities? 3. In what ways does interactional language use that occurs during these experiencing activities contribute to the design of analyzing, conceptualizing, and applying activities?

Findings demonstrate ways in which students practice interactional literacies and how these practices can facilitate and signal students’ movement between knowledge processes. This research suggests ways for second language instructors to observe, identify, and analyze interactional language, which in turn informs multiliteracies-based curriculum design.

INTRODUCTION The realities surrounding daily communication and what it means to engage in interaction are continuously in flux. With the regular emergence and development of digital technologies that allow for audio-, video-, text-, and other media-based interactions, communication has become a multimodal act that calls upon the practice of multiple literacies in personal, professional, and educational spheres. These ever-changing definitions of what it means to communicate have motivated scholars to explore how second language learners develop the kinds of literacy that will support them while interacting in and with a variety of modes. Some of this research emphasizes the increasingly digital contexts in which language learners encounter, consume, and dialogue about texts, which has in turn caused a reconsideration of traditional perspectives that view orality and literacy as alternate ends of a binary system (Kern, 2014). That is, digital and digitally enhanced, face-to-face communication continues to blur the “boundaries of what can be understood as speech” (Lotherington & Ronda, 2014, p. 17), thus creating new, more complex ideas of how one participates in communication.

The robust and ever-developing role of the digital in day-to-day communication over the last twenty years has led second language scholars and educators to identify pedagogical frameworks and approaches that encourage authentic practices of these new literacies as learners engage in a variety of communicative modes using different media. Recent research on second language teaching and learning has focused on the design and implementation of materials that encourage language learners to critically examine how digital texts and interactions are created, structured, experienced, and interpreted (Reinhardt, 2019; Thoms & Poole, 2017, 2018; Warner

& Chen, 2017). These perspectives emphasize the role of authentic contexts and practices in which learners are immersed in order to become critical users of the target language, and 11 therefore prioritize opportunities for learners to interact in modes that are socially and culturally authentic for the current realities of communication.

Conceptual Frameworks

Multiliteracies Pedagogies

In recognition of the multiplicity of modes and media that characterize day-to-day communication, scholars have sought after the best practices to represent these new and developing realities in and beyond the second language classroom. Multiliteracies has become one framework for approaching these inquiries, Initially introduced in Education scholarship in the late 1990s by the New London Group (1996), this framework expands the traditional definition of literacy, or the ability to read and write, to one that acknowledges the ever-evolving multimodal processes of meaning making and communication primarily through texts.

Multiliteracies theorizes learning as divided into four knowledge processes, most recently conceptualized by Cope and Kalantzis (2009) as experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying. Multiliteracies scholars within second language learning have spent over two decades theorizing these knowledge processes and creating pedagogical examples of their implementation at all levels of second language instruction. Empirical research on these implementations have found that multiliteracies pedagogies allow for L2 learners to progress through a less bifurcated curriculum and increase learner awareness of the role of various linguistic, cultural, and semiotic meaning-making processes in language development (Kumagai,

Nashimata, & Sato, 2016; Paesani, 2015; Allen, 2009; Mantero, 2006). These benefits are present in numerous contexts, several of which consist of the holistic approach to language, literature, and culture, the integration of traditionally separated skills (i.e., reading, writing, 12 speaking, listening), and the combination of literacy-based approaches to create new multiliteracies pedagogy.

More recent research in L2 teaching and learning has begun to turn a critical eye towards certain aspects of multiliteracies pedagogies and their uptake in second language educational contexts. For example, a series of studies suggest there is an imbalance in the representation of each knowledge process within second language learning materials (Fterniati, 2010; Menke &

Paesani, 2019; Rowland et al., 2014) and experiencing-oriented activities, or learning that draws on learners’ prior experiences, existing knowledge, and previous and new meaning-making experiences with texts, often continue to dominate lessons planned by instructors teaching in multiliteracies-oriented second language programs, despite studies that reiterate the crucial role each knowledge process plays in facilitating learners’ critical awareness and production of language (Bhooth, Azman, & Ismail, 2015; Michelson & Dupuy, 2014). Analyses of teacher- generated materials for multiliteracies instruction have revealed many potential reasons for this overemphasis on experiencing texts, from an incomplete understanding of literacies and how to implement these pedagogies at various levels of instruction, to the perpetuation of traditional views of literacy instruction that assume advanced proficiency is required for analyzing and conceptualizing through texts and do not acknowledge the role of the first language (L1) as a resource (Menke & Paesani, 2019; Paesani, 2017).

Menke and Paesani (2019) offer several recommendations for “expanding the resources and practices a learner brings to a text through instruction that moves beyond experiencing” (p.

25). This expansion will involve research that in turn goes beyond theorizing what each knowledge process looks like and emphasizes actual investigation of the language practices that mediate and characterize the kinds of meaning making that learners enact during each knowledge 13 process. This also involves investigating the instructional practices that characterize the implementation of these knowledge processes. In spite of these calls within L2 teaching and learning, there has been a tendency both within educational research more broadly and in second language educational research more specifically to undertheorize the ways in which learners actually engage in and move between these knowledge processes during learning activities (e.g.

Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, & Dalley-Trim, 2016).

The current dissertation project addresses the specific recommendation to analyze multiliteracies-based interpersonal activities as they are constructed, scaffolded, and carried out by both language instructors and language learners. The possible overreliance on experiencing in

L2 materials motivated this project to explore and analyze language use that occurs during the implementation of experiencing-oriented activities. In doing so, it sought to better understand how its manifestation in actual practice might help scholars and educators to identify communicative and interactional affordances that are associated with this knowledge process, and ultimately to identify and build off of moments during interpersonal communication that signal movement beyond experiencing and between the other three knowledge processes.

Qualifying Experiencing

Experiencing emphasizes learners’ exposure to real world texts which are relevant to their own lives. This knowledge process highlights the role of learners’ interests, prior experiences, and existing knowledge in new and familiar meaning-making experiences and creates pedagogical and cultural connections between situations of “school learning” and those situated within “practical out-of-school experiences” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, p. 185; Kalantzis

& Cope, n.d.). Within the L2 learning context, experiencing the known has often been 14 operationalized through learning activities like brainstorming about lived experiences related to a given text or topic and expressing opinions and thoughts based on these prior experiences and sets of knowledge. Experiencing the new typically involves immersing learners in meaning making practices that highlight the less familiar, such as introducing a new text or genre.

This emphasis on knowledge that learners possess and develop through engagement with texts has shifted slightly since the initial presentation of the multiliteracies framework. In its initial iteration, multiliteracies adopted a perspective on learning that considered the mastery of a practice to be attained through actual immersion, or experience, in those practices (New London

Group, 1996). Learners’ engagement in authentic representations of these practices within a learning community was considered situated practice. This perspective is largely informed by sociocultural approaches to language, which hold that knowledge is based on the sociocultural and practical contexts in which it is attained. Knowledge acquisition therefore occurs during experiences of these contexts and is made possible through the recognition of patterns and ultimately “the ability to act flexibly and adaptably in context” (New London Group, 1996, p.

84). While there are few distinctions made between situated practice and experiencing in the literature, the transition from the former to the latter signaled a shift in perspective from a dimension of learning to “recognizable pedagogical acts or ‘knowledge processes’” (Cope &

Kalantzis, 2009, p. 184). With the term experiencing, multiliteracies pedagogy acknowledges the situatedness of learning within authentic experiences while classifying this kind of learning as an active process.

Experiencing aligns closely with one of the foundations of situated and experiential learning theories, which suggest that learning occurs constantly, inside and outside of formal learning environments, through engagement in and with authentic practices (Baker, Jensen, & 15

Kolb, 2002, 2005; Kolb, 1984; Lave & Wenger, 1991). In multiliteracies-informed second language pedagogy, language learners draw from various sources and experiences of learning, including those connected to their first language, as they learn through experiencing new artifacts and practices in the classroom. Both experiential learning and theories of multiliteracies consider learning to be a transformative process (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; Kolb, 1984). In the case of situated learning, it is the movement of the learner from a position of novice into a place of expertise and knowledge, whereas experiencing assumes a level of familiarity based on prior experience as learners move into spaces of unfamiliarity and newness. The knowledge process of experiencing is less specific than situated learning theory about the ways in which social practices and participation within a community of practice contribute to learning. However, recent discussions in second language learning have identified several points at which experiential and multiliteracies perspectives meet through social pedagogies (Bass & Elmendorf,

2012; Dubreil & Thorne, 2017), including pedagogical practices that facilitate access to digital spaces in which learners can participate in authentic communication.

The Current Project

This dissertation project adopted a perspective of experiencing that acknowledges the role of prior and new knowledge brought or gained through familiar and new encounters with unfamiliar texts and contexts (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2016; Paesani, Allen & Dupuy, 2016). It was also informed by the previously outlined perspectives on experiential and situated learning, particularly because of the emphasis these learning theories place on the social situatedness of language practice. The current project involved three primary stages: 1) designing three multiliteracies simulations that emphasized the role of interpersonal interactions within the 16 knowledge process of experiencing, 2) implementing these simulations in a collegiate intermediate German course while collecting data from experiencing-oriented interaction activities, and 3) analyzing language use that came of face-to-face and digitally mediated interactions between learners. In its entirety, the project prioritized exploring the nature of interaction during learning activities that were centered around the knowledge process of experiencing and sought to illustrate the potential for experiencing-oriented interaction to facilitate learners’ movement across knowledge processes.

Outline of the Dissertation

The current chapter introduced the framework of multiliteracies as it is theorized and implemented in second language learning and teaching. It established a working definition of experiencing grounded in several different perspectives on situated and experiential learning. It also provided a rationale for the current dissertation project, which involved the design, implementation, and analysis of multiliteracies-informed simulations in an intermediate German course. It highlights the need for a more extensive understanding of the kind of language use that this framework, and specifically the knowledge process of experiencing, affords.

Chapter 1 further situates this study in the fields of second language acquisition, second language pedagogy, and computer assisted language learning through a review of relevant literature. This literature review provides an overview of multiliteracies as a response to various critiques of communicative language teaching and the theory of communicative competence. It then turns to research that investigates the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy, with an emphasis on how multiliteracies facilitates various modes of interaction. Here it identifies a gap 17 in research concerning the potential for multiliteracies pedagogy to provide opportunities for literacies practice through spoken and speech-like modes.

Chapter 2 provides a detailed description of the instructional context and the research methods for the dissertation project. It first outlines the primary research questions that informed the pedagogical design and data analysis stages of the project and describes the fourth-semester

German course in which three, multiliteracies-based simulations were implemented. It then describes the multiliteracies design of each of these simulations and the individual experiencing activities that were central to the data collection and analysis. The chapter then explains the procedures for data collection. It provides an overview of conversation analysis, which was the main method of analysis for the interactional data collected from the simulations. Finally, it describes the coding system that was used during data analysis.

Chapter 3 is the first of two chapters devoted to data analysis as well as the presentation and discussion of findings from the implementation of three multiliteracies-informed simulations. This chapter focuses specifically on the analysis that was conducted on the face-to- face data collected from Simulations 2 and 3, during which participants engaged in a series of in- class book club meetings and a public forum activity. It presents the themes and patterns that emerged from the application of a coding system to the transcripts of these interactions, some of which revolved around creating collective opinions through practices like affirmation and opinion uttering as well as creating opportunities for analyzing and conceptualizing through collaborative interpretation and vocabulary formation.

Chapter 4 presents the findings from the analysis of the digital interaction data collected in Simulations 1 and 2, during which participants interacted with one another through chat using

Google Hangouts. This chapter highlights the kinds of language use and practices that were 18 facilitated by digital interaction spaces. Rather than comparing the findings to those from face- to-face data, this analysis chapter discusses the findings from a perspective that acknowledges the prominent, and in some cases, dominant role that digital communication assumes in second language learning as well as the potential affordances that digital communication pose for digital literacies and multiliteracies practice.

Chapter 5 provides a synthesis of the findings from both sets of interactional data and presents several primary conclusions about the ways in which learners approach and engage in face-to-face and digital interaction during experiencing-oriented activities, and in some cases those that draw on other knowledge processes. It then discusses these conclusions as contributions to the field of second language acquisition as well as the implications it poses to second language pedagogy and multiliteracies curriculum design.

CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW Introduction

The field of second language (L2) teaching and learning has seen a persistent shift over the last sixty years towards perspectives that emphasize language in use, or communication.

Over the last thirty years of this shift, awareness of the complexity of communication has greatly increased, due in part to the rapid introduction of new technologies that continue to create new avenues for interaction and to connect users across languages and cultures. Modern L2 research and practice has identified a need to address and represent these complexities by prioritizing opportunities for language learners to engage in experience-based learning often framed as situated communication, interaction, or literacy practices (Hall, 1995, 2010; Kern, 2014;

Michelson, 2018; Michelson & Dupuy, 2014; Thorne & Reinhardt, 2008; Young, 2013).

This chapter reviews theoretical and empirical research that investigates interaction and literacy and sets up the notion of experiencing, a key concept in the study on which this dissertation reports. It first traces the perspective shift in the field towards the concept of language in use and the increased awareness of its complexity. This shift manifested itself through several key theories, pedagogical approaches, and research agendas related to L2 interaction and communication, including communicative competence, communicative language teaching, classroom discourse, computer mediated communication, and more recently literacy/multiliteracies. After offering a brief history of interaction and language-in-use as key concepts for foreign language teaching, I will focus on the multiliteracies framework as a response to the rise of digital technologies, mass migration and the need to adopt a view of language that acknowledged multiplicity and complexity. Finally, it discusses some of the more recent critiques in the literature related to multiliteracies frameworks, in particular the tensions that arise from the persistent overreliance on experiencing activities in the development of 20 multiliteracies materials (Bhooth, Azman, & Ismail, 2015; Menke & Paesani, 2019; Michelson &

Dupuy, 2014; Rowland, Canning, Faulhaber, Lingle, & Redgrave, 2014) and the possible overemphasis of critical and analytical processes in the scholarly literature.

Recognizing Complexity in Communication

Language as Structure

Before Dell Hymes’ introduction of communicative competence into the discussion of language knowledge and use (Hymes, 1967, 1972), L2 pedagogy was largely informed by grammar-based methods that prioritized linguistic structure and presented these structures in decontextualized sequences (Richard-Amato, 1988). Grammar translation adopted a deductive approach to presenting content to learners; that is, grammatical structures were modelled and explained, new vocabulary was glossed in the first language (L1), and learners then translated the text into their L1. This method did not place any emphasis on oral language use nor on interactional activities in the target language; rather, it emphasized the development of learners as what was traditionally defined as literate readers and writers. This focus on the ability to comprehend and produce grammar in written forms shifted after the Second World War as the need for proficient listeners and speakers of critical languages grew. The audiolingual method, developed originally by the U.S. Army, was based on the psychological study of behaviorism and focused solely on the production of oral language through repetition of dialogues and memorization drills. The purpose of these drills was not to create opportunities for personalization and language play, but to practice and perfect pronunciation and to memorize grammatical structures and colloquial phrases (Kramsch, 2006; Richard-Amato, 1988). 21

Grammar-based and behaviorist approaches to L2 instruction depicted language as a structural system to be mastered through memorization, translation, and repetition. Views of language on a global scale, however, did not remain in alignment with these paradigms as physical and social movement throughout Europe increased during the 1970s. Migration between countries resulted in the need for workers to establish connections to the target language through access to native-speaker communities (Kramsch, 1986, 2006) and thus communicative competence emerged as primary pedagogical goal.

Language as Communication

The concept of communicative competence developed out of debates surrounding the distinction between the notions of linguistic competence and performance during the 1960s.

Hymes (1967, 1972) challenged a Chomskyan (1965) perspective of language that disregarded its sociocultural features, particularly in the realm of performance, and devised a new framework that aimed to study language from a socially and culturally situated lens. Communicative competence came to be understood as the measurable unit of language learning and the knowledge of the social and linguistic rules that guide language use through communicative approaches to L2 pedagogy (Canale, 1983; Canale & Swain, 1981; Breen & Candlin, 1980;

Canale & Swain, 1980). According to the framework developed by Canale and Swain (1980,

1981) the term “communicative competence” assumes not only grammatical, but sociolinguistic and strategic competence, and does not place precedence on one before the other. Although these theories are often placed in opposition to explanations of language that do not emphasize its sociocultural features and guidelines, they do not disregard the importance of grammatical knowledge and performance (Campbell & Wales, 1970; Hymes 1972). Rather, they highlight the gap that is created by a view of language as strictly pertaining to grammar and consider instead 22 language in use, which includes notions of feasibility, appropriateness, and the consequences of linguistic performance.

Communicative language teaching (CLT) emphasized a number of concepts that have remained central to the shift away from structural approaches to L2 instruction and towards frameworks informed by experiential learning and literacy. Its purpose was to facilitate language learning as a process of socialization; that is, “learning how to communicate as a member of a particular socio-cultural group” (Breen & Candlin, 1980, p. 90). This purpose would be realized and achieved by way of learners interacting with one another, the instructor, and the curricular materials through both active and passive communicative and metacommunicative activities

(Widdowson, 1978). It was also defined by learners’ expectations for language use, as well as by the knowledge they already possess about communication in their native language and in the target language. The instructor acted as a facilitator of communication between learners, activities, and materials (i.e., texts), and took on additional roles of learner and researcher. The physical space of the classroom was viewed as a social setting with its own rules and norms for communication and interaction. This feature of CLT is influential for research that has applied discourse and conversation analysis strategies to the classroom (Hall, 2010; Huong, 2007; De

Guerrero & Villamil, 1994; Seedhouse, 2005).

Interactional Competence

With a more salient emphasis on language in use came theoretical and practice-based approaches to investigating the intricacies of interaction. Kramsch (1986) proposed the implementation of syllabi that emphasize the development of interactional competence; that is, an understanding and aptitude for discourse. This involves an awareness of speech organization, social relationships in the classroom and the target culture, and the ability to critically reflect on 23 patterns and parameters of language use (p. 369). Young (2013) aligns his perspectives with interactional competence as well while emphasizing that this particular competence is not attained by an individual, but worked towards and accomplished during interactive practices, a term from Hall (1993, 1995) he expanded upon, or “recurring episodes of talk that are of sociocultural significance to a community of speakers (Young, 2013, p. 18). From this perspective, interactional competence involves knowledge of rhetorical scripts, register, turn- taking, topic management, role-taking and ratification, closings, and transitions. Each of these areas acts as a sub-competence within the overarching objective of interactional competence.

Language scholars turned to interaction to recharacterize language learning as a dynamic process rather than a set of static rules and proficiency objectives attained by an individual learner (Kramsch, 1986). Interaction, while defined differently by various researchers, involves not only the face-to-face communication between two individuals (e.g., two learners, learner and instructor), but the process of engaging with learning materials, learner-produced artifacts, context, and more recently, with digital media. It is collaborative in nature, and therefore cannot rely solely on the contributions of one learner, nor can interactional ability be measured without consideration of all participants and all interactional modes.

Recognizing Complexity through Technology

The introduction and implementation of communicative language teaching carried the shift towards literacy practice further through its emphasis on experiential and socially situated aspects of L2 learning; however, CLT and the theory of communicative competence did less to recognize the multiplicity in communicative modes, modalities, and cultures. Awareness of this multiplicity began to rise in the late 1990s and into the early 2000s as access to digital 24 technologies increased. Communication was no longer limited to “personal engagement with interlocutors from different cultures in one-on-one, one-at-a-time, face-to-face negotiation of difference”; rather, language in use now enabled “making contact and staying in touch by surfing diversity” through the use of socially and globally oriented technologies and networks (Kramsch,

2014, p. 302).

Research in computer mediated communication (CMC) expanded upon CLT’s approach to communication and began to explore the inherent complexity and multiplicity of language in use through investigations of interaction mediated by digital technologies. A number of studies investigated oral proficiency gains following CMC in synchronous (SCMC) and asynchronous

(ACMC) modes. Quantitative analyses revealed a significant gain in oral proficiency and fluency for L2 learners who engaged in SCMC (Blake, 2009; Payne & Ross, 2005; Payne & Whitney,

2002; Razagifard, 2013). Because of the comparatively low speed of conversation during online chat, L2 learners were able to plan before responding, notice and correct for grammatical accuracy, and revisit information that was shared earlier during chat sessions. Corpus analyses of chat transcripts suggested that this slower, more accessible mode of communication also allowed for more time to construct longer, more complex utterances (Payne & Ross, 2005; Sauro &

Smith, 2010). ACMC appears to contribute, although less significantly, to accuracy and an increased amount of oral vocabulary production as well, but this mode of communication is not as present as its synchronous counterpart in the existing body of literature (Abrams, 2003;

Razagifard, 2013).

Research in computer assisted language learning (CALL) also fostered a greater awareness of the complexities surrounding digital discourse by investigating the development of discursive strategies of L2 learners during digital interaction. This area of research treated CMC 25 not as a means for the transfer of skills from one mode of communication to another, but as a sociocultural tool that mediates learning within interaction (Darhower, 2002, 2008; Vandergriff,

2013a). Darhower (2002, 2008) found that task completion using SCMC was mediated by a number of interactive features, such as the establishment and loss of intersubjectivity, off-task discussion of mutually negotiated topics, and the minimal use of the L1. Learners also displayed social behaviors that have been found to be facilitative in the establishment of telecollaborative, virtual discourse communities and the development of sociolinguistic competence, such as ritualistic greeting and leaving-taking, joking, teasing, and insulting one another, and assuming and maintaining roles and alternative identities within the community (Darhower, 2007).

Findings from comparative studies of pragmatic development in oral and written SCMC have revealed a significant difference in the kinds of pragmatic strategies that are available to learners during interaction (Sykes, 2005; Vandergriff & Fuchs, 2009, 2012). While refusing an invitation in written SCMC, for example, learners were unable to strengthen their refusal by changing their tone of voice, and therefore accommodated by using additional supporting moves, such as apologies and explanations (Sykes, 2005). Although none of the learners in Syke’s

(2005) experimental groups displayed native-like norms in enacting a refusal, those in the written

SCMC group made the largest strides towards these norms through increased attention to the complexity and the variety of refusal strategies. Investigations of nonverbal pragmatic strategies in written CMC (i.e., CMC cues) point towards the importance of tools such as exclamation points, ellipsis, discourse markers like “hmm”, and emoticons in the mitigation of disagreement and maintaining emotive communication (Vandergriff, 2013).

Research in CMC and CALL provided detailed insight on a number of the intricacies that characterize digitally mediated language in use. In doing so, it also contributed towards an 26 increased awareness of communication as a series of practices that occur in multiple contexts and modes. While this strand of research furthered the shift towards the recognition of these complexities, many of the previously outlined studies approached CMC as a means to an end

(i.e., improved oral output) rather than viewing digital interaction as an avenue for making meaning and an opportunity to engage in critical analysis of language in use. This focus on meaning making can be found in literacy-based approaches, including those that emphasize digital literacies practice through various modes of digital interaction (Kern, 2015; Thoms &

Poole, 2017; Thoms, Sung, Poole, 2017). In the section that follows, I describe these literacy- based paradigms in more detail, including the ways in which they recognize literacy as always already including digital literacy practices such as those described in CMC research.

Multiliteracies: A Response to Complexity

In the 1990s, growing voices from the field of education agreed that social, professional, and personal realities of the learner were in fact changing along with the increasingly globalized world. They argued that the state of education in schools was hindered by an outdated concept of literacy and outcomes that did not align with the dynamicity of social and professional life. In order to respond to globalization, a new understanding of literacy would need to be created, one that drew on the increased role of cultural and linguistic diversity in public and work-related spaces and the decrease in private space as media and technology continued to enter into intra- and interpersonal communication (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000; Kearney, 2016; New London Group,

1996; Warner & Dupuy, 2018). This shift in thinking in education also inspired corresponding shifts in L2 teaching and learning from proficiency-oriented, skill-based L2 instruction to 27 literacy- and literacies-oriented instruction that emphasizes the linguistic, cultural, and social diversity of language and language learners.

The theoretical and practice-oriented conversations that drove this shift in perspective from language as structure to language as communication led L2 research and pedagogy to a greater awareness of the complexities that constitute language in use. These complexities continued to become more salient through mass movement and migration and the rise of digital technologies that contributed to making connections across physical, social, and cultural expanses. Perspectives on language needed to expand once again in order to recognize the effect of these patterns and technological innovations. Scholars turned towards the concept of literacy to inform responses to these developing realities, one of which came in the framework of multiliteracies which emphasizes multiplicity in literacy, modality, and culturality that contributes to L2 learning. Introduced by the New London Group (1996) and developed further by several scholars within education and second language acquisition (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000,

2009; Kalantzis & Cope, 2016; Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016), this framework highlights the complex, multimodal process of making meaning in traditional and modern forms of language use, while responding to the increased awareness of cultural and linguistic diversity both locally and on a global scale.

Notions of Literacy

Several extensions of literacy as it applies to second language learning came from these discussions. Among them are notions that literacy is dependent on a socially and culturally-based understanding of what it means to be literate, as well as on multiple shifts in social norms, assumptions, and ideologies surrounding language and the cultures in which they are used 28

(Swaffar & Arens, 2005; Kern, 2000). This also includes a shift in meaning-making practices, such as interpretation, collaboration, cultural knowledge, and language use (Kern, 2000). Kern’s sociocultural approach to literacy allows for the continued consideration of the changing circumstances of “human communication” and encourages the hands-on practice of literacy in the language classroom.

A second extension came from the New London Group (1996) and the continued work of its members in the framework of multiliteracies. This term encompasses “the multiplicity of communications channels and media” and “the increasing salience of cultural and linguistic diversity” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, p. 5). Within a framework of multiliteracies, literacy practice is no longer reduced to developing proficiency in reading and writing. Instead, this framework highlights the increasingly multimodal process of making meaning in traditional and new forms of communication, while responding to the increase in cultural and linguistic diversity and accessibility both locally and on a global scale (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, 2009).

Shifting Circumstances in Collegiate Language Instruction

These theoretical discussions offer an explanation for why multiliteracies and literacy- based frameworks developed, but in order to understand why collegiate foreign language (FL) programs shifted and continue to shift to curricula informed by these frameworks, one must also consider the pragmatic circumstances of collegiate-level FL teaching in the U.S. Language scholars and educators criticized the traditional, yet prevailing, structure of FL departments that emphasized linguistic form and function in introductory levels of instruction, while advanced- level learning was primarily content- and literature-based (Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016;

MLA, 2007). An unfortunate side-effect of the language-content divide was and continues to be low enrollments in advanced-level courses as students complete their language requirements and 29 do not have the time nor the motivation to continue with the language program (Furman,

Goldberg, & Lusin, 2007, 2010).

Departmental bifurcation was a primary focus in the Modern Language Association Ad

Hoc Committee's (2007) call for redesign in college curricula and a driving force in the turn towards literacy-based language instruction (Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2016; Swaffar & Arens,

2005). In their book “A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching”,

Paesani, Allen, and Dupuy (2016) address the “lack of a unified approach to FL teaching and curriculum design across instructional levels” as a primary cause for the perpetuation of this bifurcation, and propose multiliteracies as a way to unify the curriculum across levels (p. 1). This particular framework, with its emphasis on providing learners with opportunities to engage with, reflect on, and (re)design texts and meaning in multimodal ways at all levels acts as a viable solution to creating coherence and continuity within courses, curricula, and FL departments.

Knowledge Processes

The pedagogical implementation of multiliteracies involves four primary moves that characterize what learners actively do in order to engage with a text. These pedagogical acts were originally described as Situated Practice, Overt Instruction, Critical Framing, and

Transformed Practice by the New London Group (1996); however, Cope and Kalantzis (2009) later reconceptualized them in order to represent more explicitly the active processes by which learners were making meaning. The knowledge processes do not occur in any specific sequence, nor do they act as discrete categories for various kinds of learning activities and tasks. They are instead a reminder for instructors of the wide array and fluidity of options for encountering, connecting, and interacting with and around texts. Their non-sequential nature denotes the opportunities available to students to weave through these processes in any direction with 30 facilitative scaffolding from their instructor (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2015; Luke, Cazden, Lin,

& Freebody, 2004).

While experiencing a text (i.e., Situated Practice), learners consider their own private, public, and educational spheres and how their lived experiences align with a text or topic introduced during instruction. Acts associated with recalling experiences and bringing knowledge into the learning context are indicative of experiencing the known. Experiencing the new, then, highlights the unfamiliar aspects of the learning context, such as new texts, new ways to approach them, and new information surrounding and within them (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009,

2015). In a lesson that features images of and texts about a controversial monument erected as a piece of art and memorial for refugees in a German city, students might brainstorm associations they have with an image of a monument, or describe the emotions and thoughts that this particular image or the monument in the image evokes in order to experience the known.

Students might then experience the new by reading four newspaper headlines about this monument in the target language, and organize these headlines using a list of categories.

Conceptualizing (i.e., Overt Instruction) draws students’ attention to the conventions that organize and typify a text, which in turn allows them to make experientially informed theories about the purpose of various structures and conventions in a particular genre. In the lesson described previously, conceptualizing by naming might take the form of students identifying structures that locals are using in their brief opinions about the monument. Conceptualizing with theory might then involve observing whether there are any patterns in these structures across this speech genre, such as the common use of the verb “finden” (to find, think), and creating a theory to explain why this verb is often used for expressing opinions. 31

The process of analyzing (i.e., Critical Framing) consists of making connections between meanings conveyed in a text and the social context that surrounds this text. Students do this by identifying, explaining and interpreting relationships as well as determining the purpose behind the various elements of a text. While analyzing functionally, students contemplate questions concerning the functional purpose of a text or piece of meaning, like “what does it do? How does it do it? What are its structure, function, relations and context? What are its causes and what are its effects?” (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015, p. 20). For example, after encountering an image of the monument for refugees and before receiving any other texts related to it, students may predict why this particular structure was created based on its location, its structural and artistic appearance, and the language etched into its base. Analyzing critically emphasizes perspective and perspective taking in order to evaluate intended meanings behind a text. Students think about the perspective from which they view a text, its various conventions, as well as its meanings, and how this perspective is informed by their cultural and social contexts. Just as they engage in critical evaluation of their own perspective, they also compare their experience of the text to the perspectives of individuals from a different cultural context, the perspectives of the individuals represented within the text, as well as the perspective of the text’s creator. In the case of the monument, after students see an interview with the artist behind this piece, an instructor might ask students to describe how they viewed the purpose of the monument before and after hearing the interview, and to describe specific connections they see between the design of the monument and the way the artist describes his intent behind the piece.

Students engage in the process of applying (i.e., Transformed Practice) by actively implementing knowledge, concepts, and experiences in an actual or simulated real-world context. These applications are often processes of personalization, during which students align 32 their own creativity, interests, and lived experiences with the various aspects of a text and the knowledge gained from them. While applying appropriately, students go about their implementation through reinvention; that is, students might follow the patterns they identified in the opinions of locals about the monument and write or record their own opinion as if they were also responding to the reporter who collected these opinions. Applying creatively, on the other hand, involves innovation as students pull from their existing or new knowledge and experiences and develop something new. For example, students might design their own monument for refugees or another group of people in the city in which they live and write a proposal to the city in which they describe where it will be located, why they chose this location, and how they went about creating the piece.

Imbalanced Implementation

Multiliteracies-oriented lessons, however, have been shown to devote a significant amount of instructional time to the process of experiencing at the expense of less opportunities for learners to engage in conceptual and analytical thinking. The prioritization of activities that draw on learners’ personalization of material over those that facilitate their ability to speculate on the makeup of a text and its underlying messages or purpose has been critiqued as a perpetuation of the shortcomings of communicative language teaching; that is, L2 instruction that limits meaning making to evaluative language use and often overlooks the spontaneous nature of language use in personal and educational contexts (Leander & Boldt, 2013). This tendency to rely strongly on experiencing in L2 materials signals some misinterpretations of the concept of literacy as it informs multiliteracies pedagogy as well as an incomplete understanding of what learners actually do to make meaning during the implementation of these activities (Menke &

Paesani, 2019; Paesani, 2018; Rowland, Canning, Faulhaber, Lingle, & Redgrave, 2014) 33

Literacy, Multiliteracies and Interactional Language

Multiliteracies-based approaches to communication in the L2 classroom distance themselves drastically from the patterns of Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) and functional, oral language use of communicative pedagogies. As outlined by Paesani, Allen, and Dupuy

(2016) in their explanation of a multiliteracies framework for collegiate L2 programs, a pedagogy of multiliteracies does not separate language learning into skills to be mastered.

Instead, it characterizes learning as meaning design; a creative process during which multiple forms of texts are encountered, interpreted, created, and transformed, and through which connections are made between form and meaning. Oral language use is a significant part of this process and is both supported by and carried out through texts. Texts and the multimodality of those texts provide a basis for speech to learners by illustrating authentic conventions of and contexts for various spoken genres. To encourage speech surrounding these texts, these scholars suggest a four-stage model for scaffolding oral language use and establishing communities of practice in the classroom: pre-speaking activities, textual interpretation, knowledge application, and summary and reflection (p. 126).

The efficacy of multiliteracies-based pedagogies in facilitating the development of speaking abilities remains uncertain. While studies investigating scaffolded oral language have found multiliteracies frameworks to be supportive of presentational and scripted oral language use, and of an increased level of proficiency overall, they are less specific about the contribution of multiliteracies to the development of spontaneous interaction between members of a community of practice (Bueno, 2002; Darhower, 2014; Donato & Brooks, 2004; Mantero, 2002,

2006; Warren & Winkler, 2016). This research often overgeneralizes oral language by using terms like “discuss”, “whole-class discussions”, “conversations”, and “evaluate”, leaving SLA 34 and foreign language scholars to assume that oral language use will simply occur because these acts are included in their curricula. Findings from research on multiliteracies frameworks is perhaps more informative when considering stakeholder (i.e., learner) perspectives and products created during the implementation of curricula informed by multiliteracies frameworks. This research often highlights learner perceptions of and cultural learning from pedagogical interventions, and regularly analyzes the written assignments learners produced to meet various course-level and unit-level learning outcomes (Maxim, 2006; Michelson, 2017; Michelson &

Dupuy, 2014; Paesani, 2015, 2016).

There are a number of other pedagogical interventions that have recently been integrated with literacy- and multiliteracies-based frameworks in order to emphasize the role of the literary in L2 learning and to outline frameworks for the analysis and discussion of texts in the L2 classroom (Kern, 2008; Kern & Schultz, 2005). Operationalizations of the notion of text-oriented learning are wide in scope and number and continue to develop as the focus of language instruction shifts towards literacy-based approaches. a vehicle through which much of culture is composed, delivered, and consumed. Kern (2000) therefore advocates for the analysis of texts in the form of content-based instruction, which relies on students’ Available Designs and personal experiences while reading, viewing, or listening to a text that is appropriate for the instructional level. This kind of instruction highlights the multimodality of communication (i.e., spoken, written, aural, etc.), and emphasizes language as a tool for making connections to and through texts.

One pedagogical approach that has often adopted these notions of literacy and content- based instruction is Global Simulation (GS). Often considered an alternative to curricula based on mainstream textbooks, GS involves the creation of a fictional reality in which participants 35 create and assume roles and work to achieve various simulation-level and course-level objectives through the completion of tasks. Although GS itself is not a new educational concept, its implementation has increased in recent years due to findings that suggest its contribution to the development of cultural literacy and communicative competence (Levine, 2004; Levine et al.,

2004).

GS curricular designs have featured a variety of contexts, including German-speaking retail companies, apartment buildings in Paris, and France during World War II, and often highlight tasks such as Internet-based research on the given context and historical background, writing memoirs, journal entries, philosophies from the perspective of their self-created characters or entities, and post-simulation reflections on the experience of a GS. Studies within the existing body of literature often seek to describe examples of pedagogical and curricular design, examine learner reactions to this pedagogy, and report on learner self-beliefs about their learning during and as a result of a global simulation (Dupuy, 2006; Kearney, 2008; Levine,

2004; Levine et al., 2004; Michelson, 2017; Mills & Péron, 2009; Péron, 2010). Fewer have combined this approach with a Multiliteracies framework, an increasingly implemented approach for the inclusion of various kinds of texts throughout the language curriculum (Michelson &

Dupuy, 2014). Even fewer have explored the ways in which global simulation and simulation tasks may or may not facilitate learners as they develop existing and new literacies related to spoken interaction, with very little emphasis on digital modes such as chat and asynchronous forms of computer-mediated communication.

Digital Literacies

From a multiliteracies perspective, and more generally, from a new literacies perspective, language is viewed as social practice. These frameworks are therefore inclusive of the role that digital technologies play in the multimodal interactional practices of an increasingly digital and connected world. Digital literacies involve the awareness of and ability to employ digital technologies in order to access, engage with, and make meaning from and around texts (Guikema

& Williams, 2014; Knobel & Lankshear, 2008; Martin, 2005). This shift towards new literacies in second language teaching and learning has in turn encouraged research in the field of CALL to consider the role of technologies in the development and practice of second language digital literacies, both in and outside of formal learning contexts (e.g., Guikema & Williams, 2014;

Kern, 2014, 2015; Reinhardt, 2019; Thoms & Poole, 2018; Thoms, Sung, & Poole, 2017;

Warner, 2004; Warner & Chen, 2017). A large focus of this body of research has been and continues to be the ways in which language learners interact and develop awareness about communication in online spaces, such as social networking sites, chat, digital social reading, and videoconferencing. The current study contributes additional knowledge about how digital literacies manifest themselves in the choices language learners make about language, multimodality, and perspective during online interaction.

Recent Critiques within Multiliteracies

L2 scholars and instructors continue to adapt curricula to a multiliteracies framework, often citing the potential of multiliteracies-based L2 learning and teaching to decrease the division between language and content that developed out of a communicative and proficiency- based design (Byrnes, Maxim, & Norris, 2010; Maxim, 2006; MLA. 2007; Paesani, 2017; 37

Swaffar & Arens, 2005; Byrnes & Maxim, 2004). However, as with any new direction in pedagogical and theoretical perspective, there are also critiques to consider if our knowledge about and implementation of this framework is going to continue to develop. Leander and Boldt

(2013) direct several of criticisms at the New London Group’s (1996) initial conceptualization of

“A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies” and the pedagogical implementations of this framework that followed. Of particular concern in Leander and Boldt’s piece was the tendency of this framework to depict literacy practices as “purposeful, rational design” (p. 24). In other words, multiliteracies pedagogy views practice as a text-centric, planned process that can be controlled, or designed, by the learner and instructor during highly structured activities. It does not consider the spontaneous nature of practice, particularly in how individuals navigate their surroundings through their bodies, for example. In general, the framework does little to consider the role of the unintentional and improvised in meaning making.

This propensity to approach literacies practice as purposeful and intentional contributes to the tendency to overemphasize the knowledge and experience that learners rely on to design and redesign meaning. Recently, multiliteracies materials have been found to rely on experiencing-oriented activities at the cost of providing opportunities for language learners to engage in critical exploration of the connections between forms and meanings (i.e., analyzing, conceptualizing) (Menke & Paesani, 2019). This limited implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy has been attributed to perspectives from CLT that have become entrenched in L2 instruction; that is, a focus on skills-based learning and situationally and functionally oriented communication.

The Current Study: Experiencing Complexity through Interaction

A review of the literature reveals a tendency for L2 multiliteracies curricula to emphasize literacies practice through experiencing-oriented activities that rely heavily on the knowledge that learners possess and gain during new encounters with texts. Many of these activities, as well as those that engage learners in conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying are carried out through written and scripted modes, which in turn points towards a gap in our understanding of the process by which learners practice interactional literacies through interpersonal and presentational modes of communication (i.e., face-to-face and computer-mediated “talk”). While recent research on the ways in which literacies practice is facilitated through written language provides welcome and necessary emphasis on the promise of textual analysis and textual thinking (Maxim, 2006; Paesani, 2018), this research has potentially contributed to the de- emphasis in how these concepts inform critical thinking around interaction.

Rather than address these potential imbalances by increasing the number of interaction- focused learning activities that highlight the knowledge processes of analyzing, conceptualizing, and applying, this dissertation project suggests a need to dig deeper into interaction that is facilitated through experiencing-oriented activities. It also suggests the importance of exploring the complexities that are unique to differing modes of interaction and the ways in which interaction is mediated through various digital media.

In order to explore these suggestions, the study described in this dissertation adopted a definition of interaction that is informed by literacy- and multiliteracies perspectives; that is, a definition that acknowledges the multiplicity of communicative modes, media, texts, and meaning-making practices that contribute to L2 interaction (New London Group, 1996; Cope &

Kalantzis, 2000, 2009). Interaction here refers to language in use as it is carried out between two 39 or more participants, although it does not exclude the exchange that often occurs with oneself during interaction with others. Much like critical discussions of discourse, it does not limit language-in-use to verbal modes as terms like “communication”, “communicative functions”, and “speech” or “speaking” often do. A literacy- and multiliteracies-informed definition of interaction assumes several key realities about language, communication, and L2 learning.

Language is socially and culturally situated, as is the knowledge a learner brings to and acquires during language use. This knowledge is multifaceted, and consists of, but is not limited to, linguistic, sociolinguistic, strategic, and sociocultural competences. Interactional literacies, then, incorporate the social, context-dependent nature of language while emphasizing the multiple forms of knowledge, modalities, and meaning-making processes that inform and facilitate learners’ practice of the language.

This definition was operationalized for the current dissertation project through a research study that explored L2 interaction during experiencing-oriented activities. The following chapter outlines the primary research questions that guided this in-depth investigation of interaction and describes the research design. It explains the instructional context as well as the pedagogical background that supported the creation and implementation of a series of multiliteracies- informed simulations in an intermediate German course. It also outlines the methods that were implemented for collecting interactional data from L2 learners and describes the analytical framework that informed the analysis of these data.

CHAPTER 2: METHODS Introduction

As discussed in the previous chapters, scholars of L2 interaction and literacies-informed

L2 pedagogy have come to a consensus: the field is in need of additional empirical investigation into the “complex nature of communication in the L2 classroom”, particularly in text-oriented learning contexts (Thoms, 2014, p. 739). The multiliteracies frameworks discussed in the literature review suggest a heuristic for the kinds of knowledge processes involved in learning.

This work has also been influential for scaffolding interactional activities related to texts, particularly through the acknowledgement of the role that collaboration and communication play in literacy practice (Kern, 2000).However, few studies to date have focused on the nature of interactions that occur between students during the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy and the ways that these interactions relate to the four knowledge processes that characterize this framework.

This dissertation project implemented a multiliteracies simulation in a collegiate-level intermediate German course in order to explore the nature of interaction in L2 multiliteracies pedagogy. It featured several interaction activities, both face-to-face and digital, aligned with the knowledge process of experiencing the known and experiencing the new, as they encouraged students to engage in a potentially new experience of inhabiting a fairytale character while reading texts and interacting with their classmates. On a broader scale, this project sought to analyze, describe, and provide examples for the ability of multiliteracies frameworks to facilitate the development of interactional language use during experiencing activities. Informed by conversation analysis, this project coded audio and chat transcripts collected from these interaction activities in order to respond to three research questions: 41

1) What are the interactional affordances of experiencing activities that emphasize

synchronous interpersonal language use?

2) What kind of language use characterizes interaction that takes place during these

experiencing activities?

3) In what ways does interactional language use that occurs during these experiencing

activities contribute to the design and carrying out of analyzing, conceptualizing, and

applying activities?

This chapter provides an overview of the methods implemented for this project. After an explanation of the positionality of the researcher, the chapter outlines the overarching research questions that guided the creation of a multiliteracies simulation and the analysis of resulting interactional data. It then describes the instructional context of the intermediate German course in which the intervention was implemented as well as the multiliteracies design of the intervention. Because the intervention incorporated interaction in both face-to-face and digital contexts, this chapter also explains how the interactional activities were designed and implemented for each context. It then describes the process of collecting data from these interactional activities as well as how these data were coded and analyzed. The final few sections outline several conclusions concerning the integration of multiliteracies and the primary analytical framework for this project, conversation analysis.

Positionality

I wear several hats in the Department of German Studies that both affect and inform my positionality in this project. I taught six sections of intermediate German during my seven years of teaching as a Graduate Assistant and Associate in Teaching and have therefore worked with 42 the multiliteracies-based curriculum for this course in great detail. I gained a new perspective as the Assistant Language Program Director during the Fall 2018 semester. In this capacity I coordinated the third- and fourth-semester basic language courses and played a larger role in making changes to and designing material for the fourth-semester curriculum. I found it important for this project to limit my role to curriculum developer and researcher and to adopt an etic research perspective, which allowed for more distance between myself and the students enrolled in fourth-semester German.

It is often unavoidable as an instructor to hold bias and opinions towards specific students based on their participation in activities that I design. As a researcher, I did not interact with the students who have consented to participate in the study on a regular basis, which allowed me to create focused descriptions of their language use that are less affected by their level of engagement and enthusiasm for other portions of the course. I acknowledge, though, that my leadership role allowed me complete access to the course curriculum and granted me the opportunity to advise instructors of this course on carrying out the pedagogical intervention for this project. This working relationship between myself and graduate teaching assistants resulted in an emic perspective on the process of curriculum design and implementation in a language program.

Instructional Context

This classroom-based study was conducted in an intermediate, fourth-semester German course at a large, R1 University in the southwestern United States during the Fall 2018 semester.

The course fits within the Basic Language Program for the Department of German Studies and is commonly known as the “fairy tale” course because of its focus on the significant role of the 43 fairy tale in the German-speaking world. It has become a tradition of sorts in collegiate German programs to offer such a course devoted primarily to Grimm fairy tales or to include a unit on fairy tales in curricula for advanced literature courses. The simulation designed for this dissertation project aligned itself with this tradition, both locally and in the greater field of

German Studies, as it involved students choosing a character from a fairy tale collected by the

Grimm brothers and developing and inhabiting this character through individual research and interactional activities.

Fairy Tales in the German Classroom

Instructors of German have long featured fairy tales as sources of material and inspiration for learning activities in course curricula. There are several, general reasons for this trend, one of which considers the close proximity of German literary history to what is recognized as one of the first collections of written fairy tales. Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, renowned Germanists and linguists of the early 19th century, gathered hundreds of folk tales, poems, and songs from

European oral traditions and published their own written depictions in numerous volumes of

Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Children’s and Household Tales). As a result of the popularity of these collections in the German-speaking realm, the fairy tale, or “Märchen”, has developed a unique ability to provide a glimpse into both traditional and modern notions of language use and social and literary culture (Davidheiser, 2007).

A second reason for the consistent presence of fairy tales in German curricula is the level of familiarity that learners often have with this genre. Thanks to the global traction that fairy tales have and continue to gain through popular films, TV programs, novels, and children’s books, it is often the case that learners are more or less familiar with at least some common fairy 44 tale elements, such as characters, plot lines, morals, and symbols from their favorite stories

(Ecke, 2004, 2008; Nollendorf, 1983). This familiarity also speaks to the universality of fairy tales as a genre, a third commonly cited reason for the inclusion of fairy tales in German language teaching and learning. Language scholars have investigated the successful implementation of fairy tales at all levels of the collegiate language program, highlighting their ability to create continuity across courses and degree programs. They also create opportunities for making connections and differentiations between a variety of cultures, languages, and time periods because there are numerous translations or even different iterations of similar stories and themes widely available. Universality of fairy tales extends to their ability to provide a lens through which to critically analyze other literary works; that is, it is a common practice to discuss themes often present in fairy tales and to use these as stepping stones to make connections between these stories and other literary genres based on these themes (Davidheiser,

2007).

All three of these reasons for implementing fairy tales in the collegiate German curriculum informed the design and implementation of a multiliteracies-based simulation for this dissertation project. This study focused on the role of interaction during learning activities aligned with the knowledge process of experiencing, and therefore relied on students’ existing familiarity with the genric characteristics of the fairy tale as they have been represented in traditional and modern depictions (i.e., experiencing the known). The aforementioned sociohistorical and cultural considerations for implementing fairy tales also informed the novel experience (i.e., experiencing the new) of students immersing themselves in the genre while reading, reacting to, and interacting around texts with their peers.

Intermediate German

Fourth-semester, intermediate German is the final course in the basic language sequence at the university where this study took place. It is a four-credit course offered every semester and consists of four, 50-minute class sessions Monday through Thursday. There are typically one to three sections of fourth-semester German in any given semester. Fourth-semester German is the only course in the sequence that is not structured around a communicative textbook. Instead, it features a selection of literary and everyday genres as its primary texts. For this reason, among others, this particular course has been a common site for text-centered curriculum development.

Colloquially, fourth-semester German is often called the “fairy tale” course and in earlier instantiations, the curriculum was built primarily around Grimm fairy tales. A typical semester included readings and film-depictions of a variety of familiar and less familiar stories, such as

Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood), Schneewittchen (Snow White), and Das singende klingende Bäumchen (The Singing Ringing Tree), and activities devoted to the comprehension and analysis of these texts, including story mapping and character profiling. These texts also facilitated the instruction of several grammatical structures and communicative modes often found in this genre (e.g., simple past tense, past perfect tense, passive voice). Students either encountered these structures first in a text and then completed various communicative Focus on

Form activities (e.g., role plays, interviews, sentence formulation, etc.) and grammatically oriented Focus on Forms exercises (e.g., completing the sentence, verb conjugation, etc.). After engaging with these stories, students drew on the examples of the genre that they encountered during the course in order to create a film in which they scripted and acted out a fairy tale of their own. 46

The curriculum for this course was redesigned in 2015 as part of a doctoral dissertation project. While the resulting curriculum retained the fairy tale as a primary source of material, the pedagogical focus shifted from textual comprehension and communicative language teaching

(CLT) to the development of multiliteracies, as well as the acknowledgement and eventual appreciation of ambiguity in the language learning process (Richardson, 2017). Learners were introduced not only to well-known versions of Grimm fairy tales, but to lesser known parodies and politicized renditions as well. They also read about and discussed the complicated social, often erotic realities that surrounded these stories before they became a literary genre. This process of “defamiliarizing” what is commonly understood as a fairy tale prompted learners to reflect on familiar and unfamiliar features of literary works, nonliterary texts, and everyday language use over the course of the semester. By re-evaluating and reflecting on the uncertainty that often accompanies this unfamiliarity, learners were in turn “reframing and reshaping their own and others’ way of thinking and using language” (Richardson, 2017, p. 26).

A Multiliteracies-Informed Curriculum

The shift from comprehension-based learning activities to those that emphasize making meaning through critical and reflective language practices is illustrated in the pedagogical design this new curriculum. Course material is currently organized into three units, each of which highlights a conceptual theme that informs the kinds of texts and learning activities that students encounter. For example, after reading and reflecting on less-commonly known information about the origin of fairy tales and engaging with various versions of the story of Rotkäppchen (Little

Red Riding Hood) in Unit 1, students utilize existing associations and newly acquired knowledge about fairy tales to identify “fairytale-like” qualities in other texts and movements in German 47 literary history. All three of these thematic units act to support students in developing such literacy practices as navigating longer excerpts from a variety of text types, expressing opinions and describing ideas in longer stints of oral and written language use, identifying generic elements and utilizing these elements in (re)creations of texts, and recognizing and negotiating multiple meanings in texts and individual language use. These course-level objectives, and more generally, the decision to reframe learning in terms of the critical practice of various kinds of literacies and symbolic competencies mirror the choice of many language program directors to adopt a multiliteracies framework, which highlights the multimodal process of making meaning in traditional and new forms of communication (Cope & Kalantzis, 2000, 2009).

The Current Curriculum

Since its first implementation in 2015, this redesigned curriculum has undergone several revisions. These changes, which can be viewed in their entirety in the Appendix, were made as a collaboration between myself, the language program director, and graduate teaching assistants who taught the course. One curriculum-level change involved rethinking the main theme of each unit in order to best categorize the kinds of activities and learning objectives that were addressed.

For example, in the 2015 curriculum, Unit 2 consisted of a brief historical survey of German literary works beginning in the Middle Ages and ending with modern migration literature. This unit was approximately six weeks in length and featured about twelve texts representing over six major literary movements in German-speaking history; that is, a very large amount of dense material to be covered in quite a short amount of time. Many of the activities associated with these texts already created opportunities for learners to critically analyze and apply the kind of language used within them. During my experience as an instructor of this course, the theme of this unit (The fairytale-esque in other literary texts), created an atmosphere of literary analysis 48 particularly during class discussions, which ultimately followed an IRE format between instructor and students and focused on identifying definitive characteristics of each text as they fit within a literary movement. In the current version of the curriculum, this particular unit was rebranded “Das Märchenhafte” (The Fairytale-esque) and students’ experience of four to five texts was scaffolded through initial skimming and reactions to each text, collaborative meaning making during small group discussions and digital social reading activities, and co-creation and presentation of their own texts based on the new and existing knowledge that emerged from these meaning-making activities.

Another important change consisted of replacing excerpts from longer works with shorter pieces that acted as examples of language use with which learners could engage in more depth over a longer period of time. Several excerpts from canonical works such as Das Leiden des

Jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) were replaced with works of poetry that created opportunities for students to identify fairytale-like features based on the definitions of fairy tales that they formulated in the first unit. An outline of the curriculum implemented during the Fall 2018 semester can be viewed in the Appendix.

The Pedagogical Intervention: A Multiliteracies-Based Fairytale Simulation

Multiliteracies pedagogy emphasizes the importance of engaging with and around texts through a variety of perspectives, social contexts, and cultural practices. Several scholars who adopt literacy-based approaches to second language instruction have identified the Global

Simulation framework as particularly facilitative of creating opportunities for students to engage in these kind of perspective taking practices and cultural learning (e.g. Dupuy, 2006; Levine,

2004, Levine et al., 2004; Michelson, 2018; Michelson & Dupuy, 2014; Mills, 2011; Mills & 49

Péron, 2009; Péron, 2010). During a Global Simulation, students inhabit a character persona and participate in a fictional reality that is culturally aligned with the target language and culture.

Students co-create the social realities of this fictional world with their peers through activities that emphasize the relationships between linguistic structures, cultural knowledge, and social identities (e.g. Levine, 2004; Michelson & Dupuy, 2014).

In order to observe and describe the ways in which students interact during multiliteracies-informed activities as well as the role this interaction plays in the knowledge process of experiencing, , three, short-term simulations were designed and implemented into the existing fourth-semester curriculum for the current project. These simulations prompted students to choose a character from a Grimm fairy tale and to develop and inhabit the perspective of this character in a “Märchennachbarschaft” (fairytale community or neighborhood) set in the German city of Kassel, which is located on the “Märchenstraße” (Fairy Tale Road), a figurative and literal road through Germany that marks the settings of popular Grimm stories and is recognized for its significant role in the professional lives of Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm. These three simulations involved three stages: the preparation activities that took place the week prior to each simulation, the primary activities during the simulation week, and post-simulation reflections that students wrote during the week following each simulation. See the Appendix for a detailed masterplan, materials, and assignment directions for the simulations. The following sections describe each simulation and the various knowledge processes that each activity facilitated.

Preparation and Post-Simulation Activities

Each of these simulations were one week in length and included one to two “prep days” prior to the simulation week and one debrief activity during the week following each simulation week. On each prep day, the instructor explained the scenario surrounding each simulation and 50

students engaged in various activities that prompted them to research and revisit depictions of the

stories that their characters’ come from in order to make decisions about how they would portray

and inhabit their perspective during the simulation. These preparation activities prompted the

knowledge process of experiencing, as students encountered both known and new texts related to

the characters they chose (e.g., Grimm version, international versions, children’s literature,

Disney films, etc.) and utilized the research they conducted as well as their previous knowledge

to inform their decisions. The post-simulation debrief activity consisted of a written reflection

based on several open-ended questions about activities specific to each simulation. For the

purpose of data collection, these reflections acted primarily as a way to triangulate findings from

the analysis with how students described the experience of reading and interacting from a

perspective that was not their own while immersed in a simulation.

Table 1 Summary of Simulation Activities

Simulation 1: Simulation 2: Simulation 3: Knowledge Märchennachbarschaft Märchenbuchclub Erzählen Processes Kassel (Fairytale Book Club) (Narrative) (Cope & (Fairytale Community Interaction / Expressing Stance taking, opinion Kalantzis, 2009, of Kassel) opinions around texts sharing about current 2015) Character creation and events (e.g., perspective taking immigration, refugees)

Conceptualizing Identifying linguistic Organizing model book Identifying differences / by naming and and genric features of reviews by their content patterns in various forms with theory model online profile and linguistic structures of narratives

Guided research on fairy Online annotations / Determining / analyzing Analyzing tale character (i.e., digital social reading of purpose / message of functionally and original text, other novel excerpt (DSR) various narratives (F2F critically versions, films, etc.) (Classroom Salon) Group discussions)

Experiencing Profile building (i.e., F2F book club meetings F2F Public Forum the known and WordPress); Community (x3) following DSR; the new Meet-and-Greet (F2F); Google Hangouts chat 51

Google Hangouts chat

“Confessions” audio Collective book club Creative narrative (e.g., Applying recording assignment book review to post on written, spoken, artistic, appropriately (i.e., reflecting on their neighborhood app etc.) with written and creatively interactions with description

neighbors)

Simulation 1: “Märchennachbarschaft Kassel” (Fairytale Community of Kassel)

In preparation for Simulation 1, the instructor first introduced the overarching scenario

for the three simulations: students had been transformed into fairy tale characters and decided to

move from their current hometown to the city of Kassel, a city in central Germany where Jakob

and Wilhelm Grimm collected and wrote a variety of fairy tales featured in their publications.

Students randomly selected a fairytale character from a pool of main and supporting characters

from a selection of these collected fairy tales, as well as a hometown located along the

“Märchenstraße” (Fairy Tale Road) from which they had moved (see Appendix). For homework

that evening and the following weekend, they conducted guided research to become more

familiar with this character and the ways in which it had been represented in the Grimm version,

in international versions, and in modern recreations and parodies of the story. Students were also

prompted to collect information that they found important for the successful portrayal of this

character and to think about ways in which they would adopt the perspective of this character

during Simulation 1. After choosing their characters, students designed name tags that included

their character’s name, hometown, and an image that they associated with their character. These 52 name tags served two purposes: 1) to allow for all of the students and the instructor to learn the names of their neighbors, and 2) to physically remind students that, once they put on the name tag, they were interacting from the perspective of their character.

Simulation 1 took place the week after the previously described preparation activities.

The primary learning objective for this introductory simulation was for students to develop their character identity and to establish their role in the fairytale community in Kassel. Students spent time over the entire week conceptualizing and analyzing the various texts they found during their research in order to develop their character personas and building a character profile on the

“Märchennachbarschaftsapp” (Fairytale Community App), a fictional online platform created via

WordPress for the citizens of Kassel to communicate with their neighbors and to stay informed about events happening in the city. This profile activity was broken into multiple parts to complete over the simulation week. In order to get to know their neighbors, they participated in experiencing-oriented interactions, such as a “Meet-and-Greet” during class time on the first day as well as a follow-up online chat with one neighbor of their choosing over Google Hangouts. To support their profile-building process, students viewed an example profile created for the instructor on the second day. The instructor acted as “Frau Bürgermeisterin” (madam mayor), the mayor of the fairytale community in Kassel. Experiencing and conceptualizing activities guided students’ viewing of this profile, prompting them to brainstorm their own encounters with various kinds online and social media profiles and to identify key elements of this genre within the example profile.

On the third day, students viewed a fictional flyer for a “Märchenfilmabend” (Fairytale

Film Night) that would feature the1960’s East-German film version of Rotkäppchen (Little Red

Riding Hood) created by the Deutsche Aktiensgesellschaft (DEFA) an East German film 53 production company known particularly well for its collection of family-oriented fairy tale films that have often been didacticized for the second language classroom by instructors of German

(Arndt-Briggs et al., 2002; Ecke, 2004). Students engaged in experiencing and analyzing activities in which they talked about what kind of event this was, if they had seen similar events or flyers before, and determined whether or not they would like to attend. They then watched the introductory scene of the film and expressed their initial reactions and predictions for the rest of the film. Students participated in a “Critics Forum” on the final day of the simulation after watching the film for homework. In small groups, they expressed their opinions about the portrayal of the familiar characters and storyline of Rotkäppchen and read two example film reviews. After conceptualizing through identifying common vocabulary and structures used in the example reviews, students applied this familiar and newly acquired knowledge by writing their own review with the goal of sharing it with their neighbors on the community app.

Simulation 2: “Märchenbuchclub” (Fairytale Book Club)

The second simulation took place four weeks after Simulation 1 and began with several experiencing and conceptualizing activities focused on how students portrayed their characters through language and visual modes in the previous simulation. On the prep day, students reviewed the final draft of their character profile that they posted to the

“Märchennachbarschaftsapp” with the specific goal of reminding themselves of how they described themselves as this character. They then engaged in experiencing through a WebQuest about the city of Kassel and used the information about their characters to determine the kinds of things they would enjoy doing in the city. The instructor then introduced the context for

Simulation 2. As new citizens of Kassel, the fairytale characters decided to join a hybrid book club (i.e., face-to-face and online) in order to find others who shared their interests and to make 54 friends. The chosen book for the book club was Michael Ende’s novel titled Momo, as it is often considered a fairtytale-like work of fantasy. For homework prior to the simulation week, students read the synopsis of the novel using a web-based digital annotation tool called Classroom Salon and left at least one comment in which they, from the perspective of their character, speculated on the kind of book this was, the themes they thought may arise, and whether they would enjoy the book or not. Students were randomly placed into a book club of 4 to 5 members. In order to establish the dynamic between the characters that were placed in the same book club, students were first asked to script and perform a two- to four-minute skit that depicted the first few minutes of their first book club meeting. This skit was oriented towards the knowledge process of applying, as students had become more familiar with their character personas and were now demonstrating that familiarity.

Over the next few days, students read the first chapter of Momo using Classroom Salon.

This site allowed students to highlight words, phrases, and longer excerpts of the text and to write annotations that their fellow book club members could read and respond to. The digital social reading activities were broken up across each remaining day of the simulation and were done asynchronously as homework. On the first day, students read the first half of the excerpt in and were instructed to focus their annotations on illustrating terms and phrases that they were familiar with using images, links, and other media and to ask at least one question regarding something they were not certain of in the text. Students read the second half on the second day, this time identifying several passages or phrases they found particularly important for the plot, character development, or other aspects of the text. On the third day, students went back through the text to reread any portions they felt they needed to revisit and to view the comments and annotations of the other members of their book club. They were instructed to respond to at least 55 one comment or question from their peers. This individual and collaborative annotation acted as opportunities for experiencing the new because it was a new variation on fairy tales that they had encountered, but also emphasized conceptualizing by identifying key structures and conventions of the excerpt. Fifteen to twenty minutes of each class period were devoted to face-to-face book club meetings, during which students talked through any portions of the text they did not understand, expressed their opinions of the story so far, speculated on the rest of the novel, and drew conclusions about various intentions of the author. Each of these meetings were recorded by one student in each book club and submitted as a required audio assignment, with the exception of the first meeting, which took the form of a skit that students scripted and performed during class depicting the first encounter between members of each book club.

Upon the conclusion of the book club meetings on the final day of Simulation 2, students read two example book reviews from German blogs and review sites and used a reading matrix to guide them while conceptualizing the reviews. In small groups, they read each book review and reacted to several questions that required them to consider the overall opinion of the reviewer, the language the reviewer used to establish that opinion, to identify specific structures they found particularly useful for that purpose, and to determine whether they agreed or disagreed with the opinion stated in the review. The reading matrix featured a column for each book review, which allowed students to compare across reviews as they considered the kind of language they would use in their own review. They then wrote their own review of the book with their book clubs. The last activity of this simulation was a digital interaction that students completed as homework. Students chose one neighbor from the community with whom to talk about their reactions to the book and the overall book club experience via Google Hangouts.

Simulation 3: “Erzählungen”

The final simulation was based on current events surrounding migration in Germany and in Kassel specifically through the macro-genre of the narrative. To prepare for the week, the instructor led students in experiencing various examples of this genre (i.e., biography, memoir, news) through identifying and describing their associations and experiences with narratives.

Students identified examples of the genre as well as common linguistic structures and vocabulary that are used within them, which involved the process of conceptualizing. The simulation week featured three example narratives: a biography, a description of life events of a migrant, and images, interviews, and news reports related to a monument built in Kassel. In the next conceptualizing activity, students used a matrix to compare the main content and linguistic and visual structures between the different example texts, and to identify vocabulary and grammatical structures that they might include or model in their own narrative from their character’s perspective.

Simulation 3 culminated in an experiencing interaction activity similar to the face-to-face books club meetings in Simulation 2. After encountering the third example of a narrative (i.e., images, interviews, and opinions about an art exhibition in Kassel dedicated to the experiences of refugees), students participated in a Public Forum during which they needed to deliberate about whether or not the monument should be moved from its current location in the city center to a less prominent location. Like the book clubs, these were in-class, small-group interactions that students recorded and submitted as an audio assignment.

Data Collection

The primary sources of data for this project were interactions that students engaged in during each simulation week. These interaction activities emphasized the knowledge process of experiencing, which involves engaging with both the known and the new realities around and within a text. To do this, learners describe their experiences that relate to the textual context, thus bringing with them knowledge they already possess to the learning context. They also encounter unfamiliar texts, new information, and participate in new ways of making meaning with texts

(Cope & Kalantzis, 2009; New London Group, 1996; Menke & Paesani, 2019). In order to explore the ways in which second language learners experience texts through interaction, experiencing took the form of both face-to-face and digital interaction activities during the simulations. The following sections describe the demographics of the students who consented to participate, the recruitment methods, and how data were collected during these two kinds of interaction activities.

Participants

Demographics

14 of the 20 students who were enrolled in fourth-semester, intermediate German during

Fall 2018 consented to participate in this study. All participants spoke English as a first or second language and had enrolled in German language courses at the university. It is typical for a majority of students enrolled in fourth-semester German to complete the first three courses of the basic language program in German Studies at this institution (i.e., first-, second-, and third- semester German), while a minority tests into the fourth semester after previous experience with the language (i.e., in high school, at a community college, while living in a German-speaking 58 country). According to the demographic information collected on the internal course enrollment system, the majority of students enrolled in fourth-semester German in Fall 2018 were Juniors and Seniors. None of the total students enrolled had declared a foreign language major or a major within the College of Humanities, but 6 students had declared German as a minor or double minor.

Recruitment

I visited the course twice during the Fall 2018 semester to inform students enrolled in the course about the current study and to collect consent from those who chose to participate. I took several precautions in order to preserve the anonymity and integrity of participants and nonparticipants, their work, and the grades they earned. I asked the instructor to leave the room during my presentation and explained to students that their instructor would not be made aware of their decision to participate until after final grades for the semester had been submitted, and only if the instructor requested the information at that point. I also provided two copies of the informed consent form to each student and asked every student to pass back one copy to me, regardless of whether or not they had signed the form. I returned several weeks later to briefly explain the study again, repeated the previously explained protocol, and collected consent from any students who had either not been present for the first visit or had chosen not to consent at that time.

Participation

Those who consented allowed me to collect the work they submitted over the course of the Fall 2018 semester, primarily during each of the three simulations, and to observe in class during the simulations. Participants were not required to complete any additional activities nor were they asked to devote any more time to the course requirements than nonparticipants. It is 59 important to note that nonparticipants did engage in the simulations and all assignments associated with them, as they were considered part of the course curriculum and formative assessment tools for the course. Several of these activities involved interactions between participants and nonparticipants, including online chat sessions and in-class, face-to-face group discussions. After these interactions were transcribed, I redacted any content from nonparticipants and only refer to this information in general terms while explaining the context of the various interactional activities.

Face-to-Face Interaction Activities

In connection with this study, participants engaged in four, face-to-face small-group interactions during regular class time and submitted recordings of these conversations as

“Audioaufnahmen” (audio recording assignments) to the Learning Management System for grading and feedback. Three of these interactions occurred during Simulation 2 and one occurred during Simulation 3. The following sections describe the ways in which these activities were implemented in the classroom as well as the methods by which data were collected from each activity.

Simulation 2: Fairytale Book Club Meetings

The second simulation encouraged students to inhabit the perspective of their chosen fairytale character while participating in a hybrid book club focused on an excerpt of Michael

Ende’s German novel Momo. The face-to-face component of this simulation consisted of three book club meetings that took place during class time on the second, third, and fourth days of

Simulation 2. Participants and nonparticipants were randomly assigned to 1 of 5 book clubs, each of which had 4 to 5 members. I used a web-based list randomizer to assign groups compared the 60 generated lists with the list of participants. If a group did not have any study participants, I regenerated the list for that group using the characters from one or two of the other group lists. I then sent these lists to the instructor for final approval. The instructor only made changes if they believed that a student’s participation in a given group would be problematic based on their attendance record thus far in the semester. Prior to each meeting, students read and annotated a portion of the excerpt with their book clubs using a digital reading annotation tool. Each book club received a separate digital copy on Classroom Salon so members could annotate together and refer to these specific annotations during face-to-face meetings.

Directions and Prompt Questions. On the day prior to the first full book club meeting, students were given an assignment sheet titled “Audioaufnahme 4: Märchenbuchclub” (Audio

Recording 4: Fairytale Book Club) which described the purpose and the directions for the book club audio assignment (see Appendix). This assignment included three recordings, one for each book club meeting excluding the first meeting (i.e., the short skits students wrote and performed on the first day of Simulation 2). The assignment sheet explained that they should each state their character name at the beginning of each meeting, talk about the prompt questions given to them by their instructor before each meeting as well as any other themes or topics they found important while reading, and that one individual from each group should record and upload each recording to the course Learning Management System. This document also included a list of

“nützliche Ausdrücke” (useful phrases) and English translations that are often used for expressing opinions and describing one’s thoughts. These phrases had been introduced and suggested for audio assignments in the three courses that precede fourth-semester German and were therefore provided as a resource for students to refer to and recycle vocabulary they had previously encountered. 61

For each face-to-face book club meeting, the instructor provided a list of questions to help facilitate conversation around various aspects of the excerpt they read collaboratively online each day. Questions were chosen as a means for facilitating discussion (e.g., scenario prompts, list of tasks or objectives, etc.) primarily to provide students with an existing set of discussion topics that they could navigate in a way that aligned best with the flow of their interaction. The instructor informed students that the prompt questions were available to guide the conversation and that they were free to expand on or stray from the existing list of questions. These questions were given to students just before they were instructed to break off into their groups to conduct and record their meetings in order to encourage spontaneous language use rather than the writing and reading of scripts (see Table 2). Questions therefore also acted as a preparation tool to assist students as they briefly thought back on the reading and the annotations they made. During

Meeting 1, the prompt questions encouraged students to describe their initial reactions to the book. Because their experience thus far with the story was limited to the first portion of the first chapter, students were prompted to describe any characters that had been introduced, express their opinions about these characters and the general story so far, and speculate on what might happen next.

The questions for Meeting 2 prompted students to consider the initial thoughts and predictions they had made during the previous meeting and to explain whether or not the rest of the excerpt had aligned with their expectations. Meeting 2 also called on students to talk about any literature or films that they had been reminded of while reading the excerpt. During Meeting

3, students were asked to sum up their thoughts on the excerpt by sharing their opinion of the book based on their reading so far, to consider whether or not they would continue reading the story, and to decide to whom they would recommend the book. 62

Table 2 Book Club Prompt Questions Book Club Meeting English German Meeting 1 What are your first impressions of Wie ist Ihr erster Eindruck vom the book? How do you like it so Buch? Wie gefällt es Ihnen? far? Which character(s) have been Welche Charaktere werden introduced? How do you feel einführt/beschrieben? Wie denken about the character(s) so far? Sie über diese Charaktere? What do you think will happen Was denken Sie, wird als nächstes next? passieren? Meeting 2 How did the characters develop? Wie haben sich die Charaktere Did this align with your entwickelt? Entsprach das Ihren expectations from yesterday? Vorstellungen von gestern? Were you reminded of other Hat Sie die Geschichte an andere stories / books / films you’ve Geschichten, Bücher oder Filme experienced while reading? In erinnert? Wenn ja, welche und what ways? inwieweit? What do you think happens next? Was denken Sie, passiert als nächstes? What is your opinion of this book Was ist Ihre Meinung über das based on this excerpt? Buch basierend auf dem ersten Kapitel? Mögen Sie es oder nicht? Meeting 3 Would you keep reading / finish Würden Sie das Buch the book? Why / why not? weiterlesen? Warum? Warum nicht? Which aspects did you find Welchen Aspekt des Buches appealing / not as appealing? (e.g., finden Sie interessant/nicht characters, plot, author’s language interessant (z.B. Charaktere, use / writing, etc.) Handlung, Sprache/Schreibstil, etc.)? Would you recommend this book Würden Sie das Buch to others? To whom / which age weiterempfehlen? Wenn ja, an groups? Why? wen? Welche Altersgruppe? Warum?

The motivation behind the majority of these prompt questions was to encourage students to describe the experience they had while reading the text. This calls upon their initial reactions, their understanding and opinion of the characters and the plot, as well as the emotions and thoughts that were evoked while reading. These kinds of questions are also typical of the genre 63 of a social book club; that is, they emphasize the experience of the reader by asking them to draw on their opinions, emotions, and reactions to the book around which they are interacting.

Because book clubs are often extracurricular in nature, these kinds of questions allow for both members who attend every week and those that drop in periodically to participate in the conversation around the book. The prompt questions used in this simulation allowed for the creation of a social atmosphere rather than an analytically motivated one.

There were several questions, though, that were intended to create opportunities for students to potentially move between knowledge processes, particularly between experiencing, analyzing, and conceptualizing. In both the first and second meetings, students were asked to speculate on what will happen next in the book. These required students to consider both what they had already experienced in their reading thus far, and to analyze this information in order to determine which elements may likely contribute to furthering the plot or character development.

The questions that prompted students to consider whether or not they would recommend the book to someone, and if so to whom, as well as the question that asked about the elements they found particularly interesting presented students with an opportunity to conceptualize the various aspects of the text that mediate its structure. In order to determine whom they will recommend the book calls on their knowledge of genre conventions, and the age groups that may be best suited for those conventions and vice versa. All of these questions also provide additional opportunities to engage in perspective-taking, as students reflected on the lived experiences of their characters and determined the extent to which these would affect their responses.

Group 1: Zauberin, Froschkönig, and Gretel. This book club consisted of four individuals, three of whom consented as participants for this study. The Zauberin (“sorceress”) is a character from the fairy tale Rapunzel and is typically considered an antagonist. This 64 participant adopted the name Mutter Gothel, a translation of the name given to this character in the Disney rendition, “Tangled”, and described themselves as 70 years old, unfriendly, and fit since they climbed regularly in their free time, playing here on the number of times that this character had to climb Rapunzel’s tower in the story. They also highlighted the importance of the garden from the Grimm story and other depictions in their educational background and hobbies.

They studied Agriculture at the University of Bremen and enjoyed gardening and selling fruits and vegetables from their garden. They identified as bilingual and spoke German and English.

While bilingualism is not emphasized in the Grimm text, it is likely that the participant considered the fact that this character is portrayed in both German (i.e., Grimm version) and

English (i.e., Disney version).

The Froschkönig is a character from Der Froschkönig (“The Frog Prince” or “The

Princess and the Frog”). This participant also chose a personal name for the character and introduced themselves as Toby Hopper der Dritte (Toby Hopper the Third), playing with both the noble heritage and the cursed state of the prince in this story. In their community-app profile,

Toby seemed to identify both as a human and as a frog. They provided images of both a young man and several images of their frog family, described themselves as having shiny, green skin and long, muscular legs, and included “ribbit” at various points in their written description. Toby was a veterinarian in Kassel specializing in frog care and identified as bilingual in English and

German. This participant adopted several traits from the Disney depiction of this character and explained that Toby enjoyed playing music, but also deviated from previous depictions of this character and included hobbies such as drawing and running.

The participant who portrayed Gretel, one of the young siblings from Hänsel und Gretel

(“Hansel and Gretel”), chose the family name Strauss. Because there were also other characters 65 from this story represented in the simulation (i.e., the mother, the father, and Hänsel), these participants decided to share the last name in order to show that they were related in the simulation. Gretel was a 19-year-old from Marburg with dark hair and described themselves as strong and healthy. They did not have a job but wanted to start a business that assists in locating witches. For this reason, they studied business in college at Philipps Universtät in Marburg. In their free time, they enjoyed going to the theater or concerts, cooking, baking, and hiking in the woods. They identify as bilingual as well in English and French, particularly because they can interact with international firms.

Group 2: Hänsel. Hänsel, the other sibling featured in the story of Hänsel und Gretel, was the single participant from their book club. This group also included three characters from the Grimms’ version of Rotkäppchen (“Little Red Riding Hood”): Großmutter (Grandmother),

Rotkäppchen (“Little Red Riding Hood”), and a character often excluded from modern versions, the Zweiter Wolf (the second Wolf). Hänsel described themselves as a young adult (i.e., 20 years old) with blond hair, rosy cheeks, and blonde hair. They regularly wore Lederhosen, a traditional outfit for certain regions of German often considered by Americans to be a stereotypical piece of clothing for the German-speaking world. Hänsel had also lost their mother at a young age and had to deal with an unfriendly stepmother who wanted to get rid of them until she died as well. It is unclear, yet plausible, if Hänsel is referring here to the witch that is often associated with their story. They described themselves as loving to spend time with animals and explained that they will soon be studying environmental science at university.

Group 3: Jäger, Rumpelstilzchen, and Königssohn. The participant who took on the role of the Jäger (Hunter) from Schneewittchen (“Snow White”) named this character Jürgen

Heinrich. Jäger was a 29-year old whose only family was the animals they spent time with. They 66 worked for the queen as a hunter but described themselves as kind-hearted. In their free time,

Jäger enjoyed cooking using the meat from their hunts and plants that they scavenged and wrote poetry. Jäger was not university educated, and identified as only speaking German, although they also believed they could talk to animals. Rumpelstilzchen was not present for the second interaction activity, and it is unclear whether they participated in the third activity due to poor sound quality. For these reasons, Rumpelstilzchen’s data was eliminated from the analysis. The

Königssohn (prince), a character from Schneewittchen (“Snow White”), regularly identified themselves using the hometown they had selected (i.e., Königssohn aus Hameln [the prince from

Hameln]). They were 22 years old and were unsure whether they had any more family besides their father, the king. Königssohn described themselves as having a lot of money despite not having a job nor an education. They spoke only German and described themselves as shy.

Group 4: Königssohn and Mutter. This book club consisted of the Königssohn (prince) and one of the böse Stiefschwester (evil stepsister) from Aschenputtel (“Cinderella”), as well as the Mutter (mother) from Hänsel und Gretel (“Hansel and Gretel”). Königssohn called themselves Prince Charmont in the online profile they created but did not refer to this name during book club interactions. They were 20 years old and identified themselves as the prince of all of Germany. They had a small family consisting only of his parents, the king and queen. They were tall, had dark hair, and wore fancy clothes. Königssohn also described themselves as particularly athletic, intelligent, and humble. They were studying leadership and history at the

Humboldt-University in Berlin and identified as bilingual in German and English. They also were in love with Aschenputtel but explained that they were not good with faces and could not find her. The participant who portrayed the Mutter called themselves Naomi Strauß to keep with the family name chosen by Gretel. They described themselves as a 49-year-old widow and 67 explained that they would like to start dating again. In their free time, they enjoyed gardening, singing, and cooking.

Simulation 3: Kassel Public Forums

Simulation 3 presented students with several texts devoted to describing and documenting recent experiences of migrants and refugees in Germany and across Europe. These texts helped illustrate the broader genre of the narrative and included a short biography of the

German chancellor, a short work of nonfiction by Turkish-German author Zafer Senoçak, as well as images, an interview, and a brief description of a monument for refugees that had been recently erected in the city center of Kassel. During the first three days, students engaged in several conceptualizing and analyzing activities that prompted them to compare and analyze the content and linguistic structures of each of the narrative examples. The last example (i.e., the monument) was used as the main text around which they interacted during a public forum in

Kassel. This public forum was devoted to allowing community members to express their opinions related to the monument and the potential relocation of the monument from the city center. This activity was similar in structure to the book club meetings, however, the groups only met one time, as is common for public hearings (e.g., town hall meetings) related to specific, timely issues.

Audio Recordings

Once students completed the audio assignments from Simulations 2 and 3, they submitted their recordings to the Learning Management Site as mp3, m4p, or mov files. I then downloaded the audio files and transcribed them using MAXQDA, an app-based software for transcribing, coding, and visualizing qualitative and mixed-methods data. I did not collect information about 68 the grades that students received on these assignments, as their academic performance was not of importance for this particular project.

Digital Interaction Activities

Simulation 1: Reactions on “Rotkäppchen” (Little Red Riding Hood)

The first digital interaction occurred after students had participated in the simulated

“Filmabend” (Movie Night), viewed the 1960s Deutsche Film Aktiengesellschaft rendition of

Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood) at home, and wrote a brief review of the film with a small group during class. Each of these activities scaffolded students’ experience of the various texts they encountered and worked to raise students’ awareness of Available Designs they had access to while interacting digitally via Google Hangouts, such as vocabulary, linguistic structures and common phrases that are used to review and react to a film

Directions and Prompt Questions. Students were assigned the Google Hangouts chat as a homework activity over the weekend following Simulation 1. They chose a neighbor that they met previously during other fairytale community “events” (i.e., in-class Meet-and-Greet activity,

Film Night review) or someone they wanted to get to know better after reading their profile on the neighborhood app (i.e., the first writing assignment in Simulation 1) and arranged a time to chat about their reactions to the film via Google Hangouts.

Google Hangouts was chosen as the platform for interaction because all students enrolled at the university had access to the platform through their university Gmail account. Students were able contact one another easily, as their email addresses are automatically included as contacts in the platform. Students were provided with step-by-step instructions for accessing

Google Hangouts, starting a new chat session, and accessing the transcript to download. This 69 document was hyperlinked on the assignment sheet that students could access digitally on the

Learning Management System.

The assignment sheet outlined several prompt questions to facilitate a 5-minute chat (see

Table 3). Upon finishing the chat, students were instructed to save the transcript as a PDF and submit the document to the Learning Management System.

Table 3 Google Hangouts #1 Prompt Questions German English Wie beginnt man ein Online-Gespräch? How does one begin an online conversation? Gefällt Ihnen Kassel? Warum (nicht)? Do you like Kassel? Why (not)? Welche Aspekte des Filmes fanden Sie Which aspects of the film did you find interessant? seltsam? lustig? etc. Wieso? interesting? Odd? Funny? etc. Howso? German English Gab es in dieser Version eine Moral? Was there a moral in this version? What was Welche? it? Welche weiteren Meinungen haben Sie zum What other opinions do you have about the Film / zu den Themen im Film? film / topics/themes in the film? Haben Sie den ersten Filmabend in Kassel Did you enjoy the first Film Night in Kassel? genossen? Warum (nicht)? Why (not)? Stimmen Sie und Ihr Gesprächspartner zu? Do you and your conversation partner agree? Wie endet man ein Online-Gespräch? How does one end an online conversation?

Several of these questions, marked in italics in Table 3, were not designed for students to respond to directly; rather, they were intended to help students navigate the interaction by raising their awareness of various conversational moves, such as how the conversation typically begins and ends and whether they are in agreement with their partner. These questions facilitated conceptualization as students were prompted to think actively and critically about how to approach and conclude the conversation and how their responses related to those of their partner.

It is also important to note that the assignment sheet contained a reminder that chat conversations are not always strictly text-based, and encouraged students to use images, memes, emojis, and other media where they saw fit. 70

Simulation 2: Chatting about “Momo”

Much like this first Google Hangouts chat, the second digital interaction activity was given as a homework assignment on the last day of Simulation 2. The last interaction assignment for Simulation 2 was a digital chat session that students conducted using Google

Hangouts. After the third book club meeting, students were instructed to find a partner who had not been a member of their book club, if possible, and to arrange a time during which they could chat about their reactions to the excerpt of Momo they had read. This assignment was intended as an opportunity for students to synthesize the opinions and interpretations they shared during the book club meetings (i.e., analyzing) and to compare these reactions to those of someone who was not involved in their discussions (i.e., experiencing).

Directions and Prompt Questions. Once students had completed their final book club meeting, they were given an assignment sheet that contained the directions and prompt questions for this Google Hangouts interaction activity. Students were instructed to chat for at least five minutes using these questions or other topics related to the book and book club experience that they found important for their conversation. These questions were broader in scope than those they used for the book club meetings so as to encourage students to call on the topics and ideas that they had developed during the book club and found most relevant (see Table 4).

Google Hangouts #2: Prompt Questions

Table 4 Google Hangouts #2 Prompt Questions German English Wie beginnt man ein Online-Gespräch? How does one begin an online conversation? Hat Ihnen der Kapitel / das Buch gefallen? Did you like the chapter / book? Why (not)? Warum (nicht)? Welche Aspekte des Buches fanden Sie Which aspects of the book did you find interessant? seltsam? lustig? etc. Wieso? interesting? Odd? Funny? etc. Howso? 71

Fanden Sie die Geschichte märchenhaft? Did you find the story fairytale-like / Inwiefern (to what extent)? Wieso? fairytale-esque? To what extent? How so? Welche weiteren Meinungen haben Sie zum What other opinions do you have about the Buch / zu den bisherigen Themen im Buch? book / about the topics in the book? Haben Sie die Gespräche in Ihrem Buchclub Did you enjoy the conversations in your book genossen (enjoyed)? Warum (nicht)? club? Stimmen Sie und Ihr Gesprächspartner zu? Do you and your conversation partner agree? Wie endet man ein Online-Gespräch? How does one end an online conversation?

This list of questions featured the same three questions that were designed to help students navigate the online conversation from the first Google Hangouts activity (marked in italics in Table 4).

Google Hangouts Transcripts

Once students were finished with their chats, they saved the chat transcript as either a

PDF or multiple PNG files (e.g., screenshots) and submitted them to the Learning Management

System. I then downloaded these files and uploaded them into MAXQDA, where I transcribed the audio using conversation analysis methods, redacted any content from nonparticipants, and coded the transcripts.

Post-Simulation Reflections

Students wrote a post-simulation reflection after each simulation week. They were given approximately 20 minutes in class to write a response to several prompt questions specific to each simulation (see Appendix). They were given the choice to respond in English or German, or a mixture of the two. Upon completion, students submitted their responses in person to the instructor who then scanned them and sent them to me via email. I downloaded these files and deleted any responses from nonparticipants. Because the reflections were used as a secondary data source, I called on them when I needed additional insight on participants’ language use within an interaction activity. This data collection method did not position learners as evaluators 72 of effectiveness of multiliteracies pedagogy on their learning in the course; rather, it situated the reflection specifically around the processes and choices about language that facilitated experiencing and perspective-taking within each simulation. These reflections were useful to triangulate the patterns identified in students’ face-to-face interactions and those in their digital interactions with the choices they made during the interaction activities.

Data Analysis Frameworks and Methods

This dissertation project combined several analysis frameworks and methods in order to identify and describe interactional practices as they manifest during multiliteracies-based second language interaction activities. Conversation Analysis, or the study of language in use, was central to the transcription of audio data, the development of a coding system, and the application of this system to the analysis of face-to-face and digital interaction data. While the multiliteracies framework informed the pedagogical design of the three simulations, it also served as an analytical framework through which students’ interactional language use was interpreted. More specifically, it facilitated the analysis of interactional language use that occurred during the knowledge process of experiencing. The nature of experiencing, which is largely informed by prior and gained knowledge from familiar and unfamiliar experiences with texts, can be operationalized through Conversation Analysis, a framework that prioritizes the social, linguistic, and other contextual resources that inform decisions about language in use.

Conversation Analysis

Conversation Analysis (CA) is primarily focused on social acts of talk (Schegloff &

Sacks, 1973) and how they are “packaged and delivered in linguistic terms” (Seedhouse, 2005, p. 73

251). A CA perspective is interested in the ways in which language and linguistic forms are used as “resources which participants deploy, monitor, interpret and manipulate” to create sequences and context around those sequences within interaction (Schegloff, Koshik, Jacoby, & Olsher,

2002, p. 15). The name of this approach suggests an emphasis on conversation; however, it has been and continues to be employed in the analysis of other forms of interaction in which there are confirmed or assumed actors (e.g., professional meetings, speeches, broadcast media, etc.).

CA, then, can be considered the analysis of “talk-in-interaction” rather than the strict investigation of utterances performed during conversation (Cameron, 2001, p. 87). These principles of CA can be aligned with the multiliteracies concept of Available Designs; that is, the knowledge and resources that users of language have at their disposal to support their use of language to engage in any given tasks or activity.

Methods of CA are based in ethnomethodology and adhere to several key assumptions.

First, that talk-in-interaction is structured and can therefore be classified further into sequences and parts. A second assumption holds that “contributions to interaction are contextually oriented” (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 236). CA concerns itself with the context created and maintained internally by the conversationalists themselves and the interrelatedness of the utterances they produce (Cameron, 2001); that is, it investigates language within its “interactional environment”

(Drew, 2005, p. xv). While analyzing interaction, the conversation analyst seeks to describe the ways in which conversationalists are able to create an interactional order using linguistic structures, thus acquiring an emic perspective aligned with that of the participants carrying out the interaction. Additionally, CA assumes the significance of every element of an interaction.

This attention to the role of every part of the whole characterizes the detailed sign systems that analysts create while transcribing recorded interaction as well as face-to-face conversations. 74

Finally, the process of CA is strictly driven by data; that is, it only connects elements of interaction to greater theoretical assumptions if the conversationalists signal their significance

(e.g., race, gender, power, etc.) (Seedhouse, 2006).

Within the field of second language learning and teaching, CA has been applied to teaching languages for specific purposes, materials design, assessment of proficiency, interaction both within the second language classroom and between native and non-native speakers of the target language, as well as computer-assisted language learning contexts (González-Lloret, 2015;

Seedhouse, 2006). Of particular interest to the current dissertation project are the ways in which

CA has informed the analysis of interaction in second language instructional contexts. These studies have identified various interactional practices that facilitate second language teaching and learning, such as using gesture to complete interactional sequences, implementing instructional practices to encourage self-correction, learners’ use of micro-adjustments during conversation, as well as the overall organization of second language classroom interaction (Carroll, 2005; Koshik,

2002; Olsher, 2004; Seedhouse, 2004). Less studies have applied CA to interaction that takes place during second language learning in digital spaces, however, some have identified and described various interactional practices and organizational features that characterize computer- mediated communication (CMC) in various synchronous and asynchronous contexts (see

González-Lloret, 2015).

In the current dissertation project, CA informed the transcription and analysis of face-to- face and digital synchronous interactions. This process involved transcribing and coding not only the language produced, but the nonlinguistic or nonverbal interactional practices that students engaged in as well (e.g., pauses, laughter, altering pitch, emoji use, etc.). In alignment with the data-oriented approach of CA, the coding system was developed through multiple read-throughs 75 of the transcripts and emphasized the description of how second language learners of German organized and implemented their interaction using the resources available to them and knowledge they brought to the activities during these interactions.

This coding system was then applied to both the face-to-face and digital data in order to identify and describe the interactional practices that occurred. This code system is outlined in

Table 5 and applied in more detail to the data in the following chapters.

Coding Face-to-Face and Digital Interactional Language

An initial reading of the transcriptions of the audio recorded book club and public forum interaction activities was conducted in order to identify the kinds of interactional practices that participants implemented during these face-to-face activities. There were also several codes that marked various structural elements of conversation (e.g., openings, adjacency pairs, initiations of closing, and closings) (Schegloff & Sacks, 1973). This resulted in 15 unique codes (see Table 5).

I then conducted a second reading of each transcript and verified that each code appropriately described the use of language and structure of conversation throughout the data.

Table 5 Coding System

Code Description Opening Terms, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that indicate the beginning of an interaction (e.g., “Hallo”[“Hello”], “Guten Morgen” [“Good morning”], “Wie geht’s? [“How are you?”]) Adjacency Pair Two utterances from two different speakers, the first of which initiates the second (e.g., “Hallo” [“Hello”] - “Guten Tag!” [“Good afternoon!”]; “Wie geht’s?” [“How are you?”] - “Es geht mir gut.” [“I’m doing well”]) Initiate Closing Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that help the speaker move towards the end of an interaction (e.g., “Ok”, “Ich muss gehen” [“I have to go”], “Das ist alles” [“That’s all”]) Closing Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that actively end an interaction (e.g., “Tschüss” [“Bye”], “Ciao” [Bye], “Auf Wiedersehen [“Goodbye”, “Until next we see each other”], a physical handwave) 76

Code Description Topic A statement or question that draws the attention of the participants to a new Introduction topic for discussion (e.g., “So was denken Sie über/zu…?” [“So what do you think about / of…?”]) Opinion The description of emotions evoked by and reactions to a particular thing, Uttering activity, event, etc. (e.g., “Ich finde das Buch interessant” [“I find / I think the book is interesting”] Topic Language or nonlinguistic cues that assist in coming to a consensus, Negotiation resolving a problem, or accomplishing a task (e.g., “Ich denke…” [“I think”], “Warum?” [“Why?”], etc.) Interpretation / Language or nonlinguistic cues that describe underlying meanings of a Expand on concept, character, symbol, text, etc. (e.g., “Ich denke …, weil/dass…” [“I Interpretation think … , because / that …”]) Perspective Language or nonlinguistic cues that indicates a shift in point of view that Taking allows the participant to speak as the character they are performing Codeswitching Instances in which participants alternate between German and English Word Search / Instances in which participants indicate that they do not know a particular Creation word and / or pause to consider which word to use (e.g., “Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch?” [How does one say that in German?]) Repair Instances in which a statement containing an error is modified or corrected (e.g., “Sie sind… sie ist tot” [“The are … she is dead”]) Affirmation Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that validate a statement from another participant (e.g, “Ja!” [“Ja!”], “Ich stimme dir zu” [“I agree with you”]) Finish Sentence An interjection in which a participant completes the statement of another participant before they can finish their utterance (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Kearney, 2012; Lee, 2000; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)

Conclusions

The current dissertation project consists of several components, all of which are guided by one set of pedagogical and analytical frameworks and methods. Multiliteracies informed the design of a simulation in which intermediate students of German adopted, developed, and inhabited a fairy tale character persona during a series of interactional activities. The creation of this simulation was motivated by an empirical gap in the understanding of how multiliteracies pedagogy can facilitate orate modes of interactional language use. Therefore, data were collected from interactional experiencing activities, which consisted of both face-to-face conversations and digital chats. Conversation Analysis guided the transcription and coding processes and helped to 77 identify a set of interactional practices with which students organized their talk. Multiliteracies also informed this analysis, as it allowed for connections to be made between these interactional practices and the knowledge processes that seemed to facilitate their implementation. The integration of these two frameworks allows for an extensive analysis of the interpersonal interaction that occurs during multiliteracies activities, a commonly overlooked and overgeneralized piece of literacies practice.

The following two chapters feature detailed descriptions of the analysis that was carried out using these two frameworks. The focus of Chapter 3 is the analysis of face-to-face interaction as it was used to experience, conceptualize, and analyze texts, while Chapter 4 consists of the analysis of data collected from students’ digital chats using Google Hangouts. Following the in- depth explanations and specific examples of the interactional practices that were identified in both sets of data, both chapters feature a discussion of how these practices facilitate interactional literacies, and how their identification can further multiliteracies-based lesson and curriculum design and instructor professional development.

CHAPTER 3: CO-CONSTRUCTED EXPERIENCING THROUGH FACE-TO-FACE

INTERACTION

Introduction

Recent analyses of second language (L2) teacher-developed multiliteracies materials emphasize the overreliance on experiencing within the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy (Menke & Paesani, 2019; Rowland, Canning, Faulhaber, Lingle, & Redgrave, 2014).

This tendency to place greater focus on learners’ prior and gained knowledge as they experience new texts has been compared to practices of communicative language teaching (CLT) that prioritized the personalization of content over critical thinking about language in use. These findings have also acted as a reminder to L2 researchers and educators that the views of language prominent during the height of CLT are not sufficient on their own for learners to engage in literacies practice informed by the inherent multiplicity and diversity of modalities that characterize communication. While one immediate reaction to this imbalance involves removing excess activities that emphasize experiencing, an empirically oriented reaction considers the practices in which L2 learners engage during these kinds of activities. This dissertation project adopted this critical perspective and explored the nature of interaction during experiencing- oriented activities. Exploring how experiencing mediates learners’ interaction with one another and with texts, as well as how their language shapes the organization of and transition between knowledge processes is a logical point from which to begin this research.

The current dissertation project responds to these calls by analyzing language use that occurs between learners during experiencing-oriented interaction activities. The conversation analysis of transcripts of these interactions was framed by the following research questions: 79

1. What are the interactional affordances of experiencing-oriented activities that

emphasize interpersonal language use?

2. What kind of language use characterizes interaction that takes place during these

experiencing-oriented activities?

3. To what extent does interactional language use that occurs during these

experiencing activities create connections between knowledge processes?

This chapter presents findings from the analysis of the face-to-face interactions that occurred during two experiencing-oriented activities. Using categories from conversation analysis as a lens, I observe general trends in interactional moves present in the data. I then focus in on several interactional moves that were most salient and explore how these moves manifested themselves during the conversations. Finally, I turn to an extended example from the data in order to illustrate and examine how these moments unfold across a larger stretch of talk.

Zooming out allows for examining how these moves are situated within and constructed by learners’ understanding of the social and educational contexts, both simulated and real, in which these interactions took place (Kramsch & Whiteside, 2008). This detailed conversation-level analysis also allows for a more complete understanding of how learners navigated interaction and provides a window into the moments in which this interaction facilitated connections across and between knowledge processes.

Analyzing Experiencing through Face-to-Face Interaction

In order to respond to the previously outlined research questions, this dissertation project observed, analyzed, and described interaction as it occurred between second language learners during experiencing activities. These activities were components of three simulations 80 implemented in an intermediate German course and required students to inhabit the perspective of a fairy tale character. The face-to-face interactions from which data were collected consisted of three audio-recorded book club meetings which took place during Simulation 2 and one audio- recorded public forum which was the last activity of Simulation 3. During these activities, students used prompt questions and tasks to guide their conversation but were also invited to interact around topics they found most pertinent from the various texts they encountered prior to the meetings.

Students captured their interactions using an audio recorder on their mobile devices or laptops during each of these activities and submitted their recordings as an assignment to the course site on the university learning management system. These files were then downloaded and transcribed, resulting in 16 total transcripts: 12 transcripts from the Simulation 2 book club activities and 4 transcripts from the Simulation 3 public forum activity. Each audio recording was imported, transcribed, and coded with MAXQDA, a qualitative data analysis tool that allows for the organization and analysis of multimodal data. The findings from the application of the coding system to these transcripts are presented in the following section.

Table 6 Conversation Analysis Coding System

Code Description Terms, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that indicate the beginning of an Opening interaction (e.g., “Hallo”[“Hello”], “Guten Morgen” [“Good morning”], “Wie geht’s? [“How are you?”]) Two utterances from two different speakers, the first of which initiates the Adjacency Pair second (e.g., “Hallo” [“Hello”] - “Guten Tag!” [“Good afternoon!”]; “Wie geht’s?” [“How are you?”] - “Es geht mir gut.” [“I’m doing well”])

Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that help the speaker move towards the end of an interaction (e.g., “Ok”, “Ich muss gehen” [“I have to go”], Initiate Closing “Das ist alles” [“That’s all”])

Code Description Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that actively end an interaction (e.g., Closing “Tschüss” [“Bye”], “Ciao” [Bye], “Auf Wiedersehen [“Goodbye”, “Until next we see each other”], a physical handwave) A statement or question that draws the attention of the participants to a new Topic topic for discussion (e.g., “So was denken Sie über/zu…?” [“So what do Introduction you think about / of…?”]) The description of emotions evoked by and reactions to a particular thing, Opinion activity, event, etc. (e.g., “Ich finde das Buch interessant” [“I find / I think Uttering the book is interesting”] Language or nonlinguistic cues that assist in coming to a consensus, Topic resolving a problem, or accomplishing a task (e.g., “Ich denke…” [“I Negotiation think”], “Warum?” [“Why?”], etc.) Interpretation / Language or nonlinguistic cues that describe underlying meanings of a Expand on concept, character, symbol, text, etc. (e.g., “Ich denke …, weil/dass…” [“I Interpretation think … , because / that …”]) Perspective Language or nonlinguistic cues that indicates a shift in point of view that Taking allows the participant to speak as the character they are performing Codeswitching Instances in which participants alternate between German and English Instances in which participants indicate that they do not know a particular Word Search / word and / or pause to consider which word to use (e.g., “Wie sagt man das Creation auf Deutsch?” [How does one say that in German?]) Instances in which a statement containing an error is modified or corrected Repair (e.g., “Sie sind… sie ist tot” [“They are … she is dead”]) Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that validate a statement from another Affirmation participant (e.g, “Ja!” [“Ja!”], “Ich stimme dir zu” [“I agree with you”]) An interjection in which a participant completes the statement of another Finish Sentence participant before they can finish their utterance (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Kearney, 2012; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)

Findings

Interactions at a Glance

The coding process resulted in 593 total coded instances of the various kinds of interactional practices identified in Table 6 during the audio-recorded face-to-face interaction activities. The most commonly coded language use was “Opinion Uttering” (111), followed by

“Affirmation” (79) and “Perspective Taking” (71). Emerging less often were instances of 82

“Codeswitching” (39), “Topic Negotiation” (39), “Repair “(32), “Word Search” (31) and

“Finishing Sentence” (17) (see Figure 1).

These quantitative summations paint a picture of the kind of language and interactional processes that characterized interactions between learners in this study. For example, learners tended to prioritize sharing their thoughts through expressing opinions on various elements of the texts they read prior to these interactions. The infrequent instances of intertextuality explain that learners tended to focus their conversation on the text at hand rather than compare, contrast, and draw on other texts they have experienced. The three most salient trends in the data were learners’ tendencies to express opinions based on the prompt questions they were provided, to acknowledge the opinions and utterances of their groupmates through affirmation, and to engage in various perspective-taking practices. The prominence of expressing opinions and affirmation align with the experience-oriented design of the activity, as the prompts for these activities aimed to provide opportunities for learners to express their opinions about the text and to react to the responses of their classmates. The third most commonly implemented interactional move, perspective-taking, was expected given the simulation context within which the activities took place; however, it was not assumed that instances of perspective-taking would arise as prominently as they did while learners evaluated and responded to the text. Each of these three interactional moves provide a perspective from which to analyze and discuss the kind of language that both characterizes the knowledge process of experiencing and signals connections across other knowledge processes and are therefore discussed in more detail in the following sections.

Moves that revolved around traditional task completion and structures were less prominent than anticipated. That is, learners did not tend to view these activities as tasks for 83 which they needed to negotiate around various topics in order to complete or to focus as heavily on aspects related to the selection of appropriate vocabulary or the repair of errors in grammatical structures they chose to use. However, when these moves did occur, learners tended to engage collaboratively in acts such as searching for vocabulary and to move seamlessly through the conversation without drawing attention to errors. These less salient moves provide some insight into the ways learners navigated interactional language use during these activities and are therefore described in more detail below as well.

Figure 1

Code Frequencies Across Audio-Recorded Face-to-Face Interactions

Opinion Uttering

The prompt questions for these activities primarily asked students to consider how they reacted to the text and to describe these thoughts based on various aspects (e.g., characters, plot, etc.). Participants therefore expressed opinions far more frequently than any other kind of language use across interaction activities. This kind of language use typically included phrases such as “ich finde” (“I find” or “I think”), “ich mag (nicht)” (“I like” or “I do not like”), as well 84 as the verb “sein” (to be) followed by various terms that describe the aspect of the text at hand

(see Excerpt 1).

Excerpt 1

Jäger1 (from Schneewittchen): Uh ich finde die Charakter von Momo interessant weil

uhm … sie sie ein Kind … ist und sie lebt allein ich ich will zu uh … sehen was passieren

mit ihr. Ja uh ... ja.

In this excerpt, Jäger expressed a positive opinion about the character named Momo, stating that they found this character interesting because she is a child, yet she lives alone. They then expanded on this initial opinion by explaining that they wanted to see what will happen next with this character. This example from Jäger demonstrates the common tendency for opinion uttering to act both as a way for participants to gain initial access to the conversation and as a springboard for launching into interpretations of an excerpt, speculations on the rest of the text, and instances of connecting various elements of an excerpt with their character.

Perspective-Taking

All of the interaction activities required participants to think back on the experience of reading and viewing texts and the character analysis and development they engaged in during the first simulation. Created to encourage conceptualizing and analyzing knowledge processes, these initial activities worked to scaffold the collection of information that helped participants make connections to and through their chosen characters and make decisions about how they would present themselves as these fairytale personas during interaction. The interaction activities therefore called upon participants to reflect on these decisions and carry out their chosen

1 No timestamp available 85 strategies and resources for shifting their point of view to that of their characters’ as they experienced the known and unknown aspects of both their characters and the text at hand

(Kearney, 2012), effectively illustrating the tendency for the knowledge processes to mutually reinforce one another.

Perspective-taking occurred both during the book club meetings and the public forums, although less frequently and less in-depth than initially expected. Each participant began every interaction with a greeting followed by their character name (see Excerpt 2). This initial step was included in the directions for the interaction activities for two reasons: 1) so I could determine which participants were speaking, and 2) to establish the context of the simulation; that is, to make students aware that they were interacting as their characters within the setting of Kassel, not as themselves in the classroom.

Excerpt 2

[00:00] Zauberin: Hallo, guten Morgen! Meine Name ist Mutter Gothel.

[00:05] Gretel: Mein ... mein Name ist uh ... Gretel.

[00:10] Froschkönig: Hallo ich bin Toby der dritte.

{omitted}

[00:14] Zauberin: Und uh da ist ... zwei uhm Tage um die Buchclub. Hallo alles!

Beyond these initial opening sequences, several participants performed their character personas by creating connections between the text they read for the book club and the stories associated with their characters. Hänsel, for example, attributed his negative opinion of the book thus far to the solitude of the young main character, which evoked strong, negative memories of being left alone in the forest (see Excerpt 3). 86

Excerpt 3

[00:38] Hänsel: Ok ich habe das Buch nicht uh mögen uh weil es uhm … vorbringt

schlechte Erinnerung - memories - uh mit meinen Schwester Gretel

in dem Wald allein und das ist nicht gut.

Affirmation

The process of moving from one opinion to another and navigating different perspectives was supported in part by the practice of affirmation. With words like ja (yes) and genau

(exactly), as well as nonwords that indicate agreement (e.g., mhm), participants identified points at which they comprehended the statement of a peer and regarded the content of these statements positively (see Excerpt 4).

Excerpt 4

[02:14] Rapunzel: Uh ich denke … Königsplatz ist … ein soso Ort für die Denkmal.

[02:22] Zauberin: Warum, nicht so schön oder … ?

[02:24] Rapunzel: Uhm ich denke Königsplatz ist … nicht für alle Leute.=

[02:30] Zauberin: Ja

[02:31] Rapunzel: = Es ist Königsplatz nicht Leuteplatz.

[02:32] Zauberin: Ja genau.

Topic Negotiation

Just as opinion uttering created opportunities for participants to describe more in-depth reactions to a text through Perspective Taking, it also acted as a point from which they could begin negotiating meaning with their peers. Negotiation refers to the things learners do during 87 interaction to understand one another’s opinion, come to an agreement, find solutions for problems, and make plans (Lee, 2000; Levine, 2004). During the public forums, for example, students were prompted to decide whether or not the monument dedicated to refugees that was recently erected in Kassel’s city center (Königsplatz) should be relocated. After viewing an interview with the artist who created the monument and reading informational passages about the monument, Königsplatz, and excerpts of an online news article featuring opinions of Kassel residents about the monument, they briefly interacted around this information in order to share their own thoughts on the potential relocation (see Excerpt 5).

Excerpt 5

[00:25] Jäger: Das ist … es ist ein gut Kunstpiece? Ich finde … das uh ist

kulturell und … es beschreibt uhm Freundschaft mit uh drei Kultur.

[00:43] Gretel: Ja ich denke es hat ein gut Bedeutung. Ja mit uh Gemeinschaft und

alles.

[00:50] Müllerstochter: Das ist ein gute Idee.

[00:54] Hänsel: Ja, das stimmt. Ich denke es hat auch eine gute Bedeutung =

[01:01] Gretel: [bedeutet für alles]

[01:02] = ja.

Gretel: nicht nur ein Person es ha … e hat uhm … es hat =

Hänsel: [viele ja. Viel Kultur]

= Vier Sprachen, ja. So es ist gut.

Word Search/Creation

Unlike the previous three interactional moves, searching for words and creating vocabulary was less common during interaction. When uncertainty occurred around producing appropriate vocabulary, participants tended to search collaboratively for terms that would fit the content and context of the conversation. These instances of searching for terms regularly caused participants to pause, ask other group members questions about a word they were looking for, and in most cases, to decide on a word that fit their intended meaning. Decisions were often made collaboratively, as the other group members often searched for a suitable word to assist the participant who initiated the search. Instead of creating moments of silence or causing breakdowns in communications, word search generated opportunities for participants to interact around the new and assist one another in finding meaningful language that reflected their thoughts appropriately.

Excerpt 62

Froschkönig: Sie … sie … like uh sie sind ein uh ... was ist die Worte.... Held?

Zauberin: Held. Ja … so Momo ist? Momo ist der Held? die Held? (debate

over grammatical gender of "Heldin”)

[Heldin?]

[Heldin, ja!]

Repair

It was rare for participants to engage in social and linguistic repair during their interactions. Despite regular grammatical errors (e.g., mistakes in assigning case and gender,

2 No timestamp available 89 subject-verb agreement, syntax, etc.), participants did not spend much time, if any, self- correcting or correcting their group members. These errors did not appear to affect comprehension among participants, nor did they seem to lead to interactional breakdowns.

Several examples of repair are provided in a contextualized analysis of the meetings held by one book club.

Contextualizing the Analysis of Interactional Moves

In order to provide insight on how the moves illustrated above contributed to interactions that occurred during experiencing-oriented activities, this section conducts a micro-analysis of all three meetings held by a single book club group across the week of Simulation 1. The specific group was chosen for a number of reasons driven both by logistics of the activities and the trends that arose in the data. Three of the four members of the chosen group consented to participate in the study and all three attended each meeting consistently. The recordings of each conversation met the five-minute minimum that was outlined in the assignment guidelines. This particular group featured the most coded instances of interactional moves in the data compared to the other groups; that is, there were 196 coded instances while the other groups each had under 100 coded instances. This consistency and abundance of interactional moves allowed for a more complex example for micro-analysis.

This micro-analysis provides a contextualized description of the ways in which learners engaged in meaning making through interaction as well as the patterns in interactional language that arose across these three meetings. The main purpose of these detailed analyses of talk-in- interaction is to provide a more extended look at how language learners might carry out multiliteracies-based interactional activities. In the discussion, I connect these specific 90 interactional examples with the knowledge process of experiencing in order to examine interactional affordances of experiencing activities as well as the ways in which learners’ language use and meaning-making processes blur the lines between other knowledge processes.

Participants and Conversational Roles

This analysis focuses on the interactions between members of Book Club Group 1 (Zauberin,

Froschkönig, and Gretel) as they responded to and interacted around the prompt questions about

Chapter 1 of “Momo” (see Table 2). Zauberin (or Mutter Gothel) acted as the moderator for all three meetings, opening each meeting with a greeting and a reminder of which meeting in the series it was, regularly introducing topics for discussion based on the prompt questions to the rest of the group, and closing each meeting with a brief statement and a salutation. Froschkönig was quick to respond to Zauberin’s questions and occasionally took over the responsibility of introducing a prompt question. They also expanded the scope of the prompt questions by occasionally asking follow-up questions to either the entire group or specific members. In the first meeting, Gretel seemed to interact less often than their group mates, offering the occasional opinion and suggestion of a term; however, their position and prominence in the interactions changed significantly in the second and third meetings, when they began posing questions to the entire group as well as follow-up questions to individuals that called on them to elaborate or contribute to the conversation.

Book Club Meeting #1

These three participants prioritized expressing their opinions based on the prompt questions which asked them to think about and describe their reactions to various aspects of the text. The transcript of this first meeting can be found below in Excerpt 7, to which I will refer throughout the analysis. 91

Excerpt 7

[0:00:00] Zauberin: Hallo alle, meine Name ist Mutter Gothel. Uhm...Willkom..

Willkommen zu Buchclub alle. Letztes Nacht wir haben die erstes

Kapitel Momo. Uhm was denken alle über dieses Kapitel?

[0:00:16] Gretel: Uhm ... Hallo, ich ich bin Gretel. Uhm … ich war belegend, weil

warum das Erzähler (unintelligible) beschreiben … so =

Zauberin: [mhm]

= ich war belegend. Uhm … was denkst du?

[0:00:35] Froschkönig: Ja ... Ich bin Toby Hopper der dritte. Uh … es gefällt mir aber

der Anfang ist lang =

[mmm]

= und die Architektur Teil war ... uhm ... =

Zauberin: [so viele Wörter … für die Architektur und alles ja … genau]

= Ja. Es war … seltsam ... und ja ich ich gefällt mir nicht. So

[0:01:04] Zauberin: Gefällt dir nicht...

[0:01:06] Froschkönig: uhm well- weil .... Ich … ich weiß nicht ob es mir gefällt weil es

ist die erste Kapitel und wir ... uhm wissen nicht was ... uh

nächstes passieren.

[0:01:24] Zauberin: Ja. Ich bin interessant zu sehen uhm was ist nächstes in das Buch.

Uhm ... Momo hat kein Hause so ich denke uhm ... in die Ende sie

kann haben ein Haus mit ein Familie =

[aw ... ja] {quiet laugh}

= Hoffentlich. Aber … ich weiß nicht. 92

[0:01:49] Froschkönig: Ja ... Ich hoffe das {laugh}

Zauberin: Ja … Uhm … da ist ein oh was ist die Wörte auf Deutsch .... uh

"turtle"?. … Uhm ... =

[Schildkröte?]

[0:02:06] Zauberin: Schildkr- kröte! Da ist ein Schil- Schil- Schildkröte im uhm das

Bild =

[Sie ist ein Schildkröte?]

= an dem Buch {laugh} nein nein sie ist ein Schildkröte nicht!

Aber sie hat ein Tiere =

[oh]

= ein Schildkröte Tiere und ich ve- ich verstehe nicht warum. Ja.

So ich bin interessant zu sehen die Schildkröte- kröte auch =

[ja]

= ich weiß nicht was ist da.

[Familie oder freunde]

= Ja genau.

[allein]

[Hat Momo ein Familie? Ich weiß nicht.]

= Ja!

[Und wo...]

= Wo kann {laugh} Momo essen auch? Ich weiß nicht!

[0:02:54] Froschkönig: Ich denke ... ich denke dass die böse Menschen wird kommen

{loud noise} 93

[tut mir Leid]

[0:03:01] Gretel: Ich bin ... einverstanden mit … ja böse … =

Froschkönig: [ja, ja … die böse Menschen wird kommen]

Gretel and Zauberin: = Ja.

[0:03:09] Zauberin: Und da ist Zeit ... Zeitmänner? {laugh} Wir wissen nicht.

[0:03:14] Gretel and Froschkönig: Ja

Zauberin: So … ja {laugh}

[0:03:20] Froschkönig: Uhm ... Welche Charakter wurden ein(unintelligible) uh Gretel?

[0:03:24] Gretel: Nur Momo...

[laugh]

[0:03:26] Zauberin: Momo und ...

[ja ja]

= und die König mit die große Schloss … bevor ja?

[oh ja ja]

[0:03:34] Gretel and Froschkönig: Kaiser? Die Kaiser.

[0:03:37] Gretel: aber das ist uhm Kontext? nicht Charaktere?

Zauberin: mhm Ja. Nicht in das Buch aber bevor das Buch… =

[ja ja]

= geschreibt.

[0:03:48] Froschkönig: Was denkst du Mu- uh Mutter Gothel?

[0:03:53] Zauberin: Uh ... Ich denke wir wissen nicht uhm alles uhm über Momo so ...

wir finden mehr in Kapitel zwei und drei und vier … und alles.

Aber jetzt ich denke sie ist jung und...sie hat kein Hause {laugh}. 94

[ja]

[0:04:14] Zauberin: Facts {laugh}

[Ja]

[0:04:16] Froschkönig: Wie denken Sie über diese Charakter? Like … wie denken Sie

über Momo?

[0:04:23] Gretel: Uh … es- Die erste Kapitel hat nur uhm beschreibt Momo like

uhm =

Zauberin: [Ja … Mehr mit die Architektur]

= so wir uhm … wissen nicht uh ... wie ist ... Momo.

[0:04:42] Froschkönig: Wie alt ist … ist sie? Like …

[0:04:46] Zauberin: Jung? Aber ist es beschreibt … in das Buch?

[0:04:53] Froschkönig: I- Ich weiß nicht. I ...

[0:04:55] Zauberin: Wo? oder...

Froschkönig: Ich lese nicht

{laugh}

Froschkönig: Nein nein nein ich lese... ich lese die Buch ... ich lese nicht

über...

Zauberin: In das Buch. Das ist nicht in das Buch … Du kannst nicht uh …

Froschkönig: Ich gelese die Buch.

Zauberin: Du hast vergessen.

Froschkönig: Aber nicht … aber nicht die (unintelligible)

[0:05:19] Zauberin: Ok Ok … und alles was denken Sie wird als nächstes passieren?

Gretel: Uhm die böse Menschen kommen. 95

Zauberin: Ja … sie ist … or sind uh böse und dunkel und …

[ja]

Gretel: Der erste Kapitel...

[hässlich?]

Froschkönig: Sie … sie … like uh sie sind ein uh ... was ist die Worte.... Held?

Zauberin: Held. Ja … so Momo ist? Momo ist der Held? die Held? (debate

over grammatical gender of "Heldin”)

[Heldin?]

[Heldin, ja!]

Zauberin: Das ist alles. Kein mehr Buchclub! Tschüss!

Club members engaged in collective word search in order to find appropriate vocabulary that illustrated their thoughts. While responding to the prompt question regarding their ideas of what will happen next in the book, Froschkönig speculates that Momo is the hero (Held) of the story after Gretel and Zauberin suggest to the antagonists will appear soon but must ask if they have chosen the appropriate term. Zauberin affirms that Held is the correct term by repeating it, but then expresses uncertainty about the grammatical gender of the term. They first use the masculine article der, followed by the feminine article die. This prompts another club member to recall the feminine form of the noun, Heldin, which is quickly affirmed and repeated by

Zauberin. This word search, along with others in this meeting, involved all three club members.

Instead of waiting for the club member who was unsure about a term to resolve the search on their own, each group member put forward suggestions until they agreed on an appropriate word.

This successful search also illustrates a moment in which the literacy-based knowledge learners 96 gained from texts that they encountered prior to these activities informed their decisions in the midst of interaction.

There were three instances of repair, all of which were implemented by Zauberin. Two were related to pronunciation and one concerned subject-verb agreement. The first instance was a mispronunciation of the conjunction weil (because), which was initially pronounced similarly to the English word “well”. A bit further into the conversation, when pronouncing the word

Schildkröte (turtle), Zauberin needed to begin the word several times, making sure they accomplished every consonant sound before pronouncing the remaining syllables. The grammatical repair occurred near the conclusion of the conversation while describing the antagonists of the story. Because there were multiple Männer (men), Zauberin switched their initial use of the third-person singular form of “to be” (ist) to the third-person plural form, sind.

The members of this group focused particularly on their uncertainty about the first portion of the excerpt during their first meeting. For example, in their initial opinion utterance,

Froschkönig chose the verb “gefallen” (to please) to express that they enjoyed the book thus far but included the conjunction “aber” (but) after this opinion to elaborate that they thought the descriptions of the setting were too long. This utterance established a shared opinion between the club members, as Zauberin affirmed and completed the statement using the phrase “ja, genau”

(yes, exactly) and elaborated that there were “so viele Wörter” (so many words) in this particular section.

This uncertainty arose again when Froschkönig explained that they did not know if they liked the book, because they did not know what happened after the first chapter. Here,

Froschkönig provided an opportunity through their opinion for group speculation and interpretation about what might happen later in the book, which led to a period of speculation 97 between all members concerning various aspects of the book on which they wanted clarification.

In these instances, each group member scaffolded the interpretation by contributing an opinion off of which other group members could build. Zauberin began by mentioning the turtle that appears on the cover of the book and her interest in learning about its role in the story. Their utterances then referred to other “unknowns” about the main character, which were taken over by a series of interjections from the other two club members. They seemed to call out some of these aspects as they came to mind, including a question about Momo’s family, an utterance referring to family and friends, and a question about where Momo is able to find food since she lives alone

(see Excerpt 9). Zauberin, in their role as the moderator,actively engaged with these interjections through constant affirmation using the terms “ja” (yes) and “genau” (exactly), effectively keeping the flow of conversation going.

The only instances of Perspective Taking in this first meeting occurred during the opening. Each club member introduced themselves as their characters, two of which had created names for their characters since the original character titles were not actual names (Zauberin and

Froschkönig). Because the prompt questions for this meeting were intended to encourage participants to utter their initial opinions of the story and the characters and to begin speculating on what will happen next, it is not particularly surprising that more overt instances of perspective taking did not come up. This group used the first meeting to talk about the general need for more information in order to fully express their opinions of the book thus far. It was expected that they may compare their own character traits to those of the main character while responding to the prompt questions, but it was not explicitly outlined in the prompt questions to do this.

Book Club Meeting #2

The second meeting began similarly to the first. Each club member greeted one another and introduced themselves. There was a fourth club member present who had not been in class during the first meeting but did not consent to participate in the study. I therefore only refer to this individual’s contributions to the interaction in general terms. The participants’ interactions during this meeting revolved around creating a joint understanding of the information used to describe and develop the main character, Momo. They engaged in experiencing not only through uttering opinions about the text, but also by recalling information that they found significant for

Momo’s character development and negotiating various meanings for this information. The transcript can be seen below in Excerpt 8.

Excerpt 8

[00:00] Zauberin: Hallo, guten Morgen! Meine Name ist Mutter Gothel.

[00:05] Gretel: Mein ... mein Name ist uh ... Gretel.

[00:10] Froschkönig: Hallo ich bin Toby der dritte.

[00:12] {omitted}

[00:14] Zauberin: Und uh da ist ... zwei uhm Tage um die Buchclub. Hallo alles!

[00:25] Gretel and Froschkönig: Hallo!

[00:26] Zauberin: Letztes Nacht wir haben gelesen Teil zwei um Momo. Es war ganz

interessant. Uhm ... so ... Fragen. Wie haben sich die Charakter

entwickelt? Ansprach dass ihren Vorstellungen von gestern.

[00:48] ja mhm ...

[00:52] Froschkönig: Ja. Momo uh entwickelt uhm sehr. Uhm wir kennen mehr über ihr.

mhm 99

[01:02] Und uhm sie komme aus ein uhm ... Orphanage.

[01:11] Zauberin: Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch?

[01:12] Froschkönig: Uh ein Waisenhaus. Uh und sie uhm like lebe in an Amphitheater.

[01:23] Zauberin: Ja. Uhm Sie findet die Waisenhaus schlecht so sie … haben

gegangen zum die =

[Amphitheater]

= Ampitheater. Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch …

[01:36] Gretel: Und wir haben zwei nur Charakter. Die Männer und die Frauen.

Was denken s .. .denkst du über das?

[01:49] Zauberin: Uh sie sind sehr nett und sie sind uh verheiratet =

[ja]

= ich denke mit Kinder. Zwei oder drei Kinder … Uhm interessant.

Uhm sie hat uhm gefragt … wo ist uhm deine Eltern und wo ist

uhm … =

[deine Haus]

= dein Hause =

[und wie alt bist du?]

= und sie weißt nicht.

[02:17] Froschkönig: Aber Momo hast uh keine Eltern =

Gretel: [Keine Eltern]

Zauberin: [Ja]

= ja keine Eltern. Uh =

Gretel: [Wissen nicht] 100

= nicht … uhm … like uh =

{omitted}

[02:29] Zauberin: Ja, genau.

[02:30] {omitted}

[02:32] Zauberin: Ja aber ...

[02:34] Froschkönig: Sie hat keine Bildung.

[02:36] Zauberin: Was?

Froschkönig: Bildung …

Zauberin: Oh ja. Sie sie war denken sie war ein hundert oder zwei hundert

Jahre alt und das ist nicht richtig =

[ja sie ... ja]

= Natürlich. Uhm...

[02:52] Froschkönig: Und uhm die uhm Leute =

[mhm]

= macht uhm eine Haus ins Amphitheater

[Ja]

= für für Momo.

[03:03] Zauberin: Zu helf... helfen Momo.

[Ja ja]

Froschkönig: Ja sie sind like sehr nett.

[03:11] Gretel: Uhm Ach so ... Ich habe ein Frage. Hat sie die Geschichte an

andere Geschichten, Bücher, oder andere Filme erinnert?

[03:22] Everyone: Ja. 101

Zauberin: Filme ja!

[03:24] Gretel: Was Peter?

[03:25] {omitted}

[03:47] Zauberin: Ja es war melancholisch auch so ... uhm ... es ist ... wie sagt man

das auf Deutsch similar? … Es tut mir Leid.

[03:59] ?: Uhm ähnlich?

[04:02] Zauberin: Ähnlich? Ja, so Es ist ähnlich mit Momo.

[04:10] Froschkönig: Ich denke Snow White =

Zauberin: [Schneewittchen!]

= Schneewittchen ist auch ähnlich uh ... von Momo.

Zauberin: [ja]

= Ja like ein bisschen. Uhm Sie ... =

Zauberin: [Schneewittchen ist allein, ja...]

= Ja allein uhm like … sie lauf-

Zauberin: [bevor nett Leute kommen]

= Sie laufen uhm zu Natur.

[04:37] Zauberin: Ja ja, genau.

[04:39] Gretel: Sie hat keine Eltern

[04:40] Froschkönig: Ja sie hat keine Eltern.

[04:42] Gretel: Aber sie hat eine Stiefmutter.

[04:44] Froschkönig: Ja Stiefmutter oder ... die Orphanage .. Waisenhaus …

Waisenhaus? (practices pronuncation) ... ich weiß nicht.

[Essentially] 102

[05:01] Zauberin: Ok. Ich denke Madeline die französisch Buche ist uhm ähnlich zu

Momo. Uhm Madeline hat kein Eltern auch und sie uhm kommt in

Franz...ösisch(?) allein und uhm gehen allüber und hat …

"adventure”? … (unintelligible) auf Deutsch.

[05:27] Froschkönig: Ja und sie sind uh junge Mädchen too

[05:32] Zauberin: Ja junge auch.

[05:33] Gretel: Warum sind die böse Mann wir denken ... yesterday I think?

[05:40] Froschkönig: Ja =

[05:41] Zauberin: [Wir haben nicht gesehen die böse Mann jetzt]

[05:43] Froschkönig: = Ja das ... keine böse uh Menschen

[05:48] Zauberin: So nächstes Kapitel?

[05:50] Gretel: Ja. .. Du denkst?

[05:51] Froschkönig: Was denken Sie passiert als nächstes?

[05:54] Zauberin: Ja! So die böse Mann kommt.

[Ja] {Repetition}

[05:58] Froschkönig: Peter, was denkst du?

[06:02] {omitted}

[Passiert]

[Passiertes]

[06:05] {omitted}

[06:07] Froschkönig: Du weißt nicht?

[06:09] Gretel: Hast du keine Meinung?

Froschkönig: Any ... oh that was English. Uhm … 103

{laughter}

[06:15] Zauberin: Du hast Fragen... über das?

[06:17] Froschkönig: Hast du uh Vorhersagen?

[06:20] {omitted} =

[like]

[06:24] {omitted}

[06:28] Zauberin, Gretel, Froschkönig: {Gasp} Nein!! Tot?! Nein!

[06:30] Gretel: Warum?! Der Buch ist ...

[06:32] Zauberin: Traurig!

[06:33] {omitted} =

Froschkönig: [Sie ist die Heldin! Sie kann … = ]

= Melancholisch Buch hat viel Tod...

[= Sie kann nicht töten.]

Zauberin: Viele tot Kinder und ... {laughter}

Froschkönig: Sie ist die Buch!

{omitted}

Everyone: Sie ist die Buch Momo.

[06:47] Zauberin: Ok das ist alles für die Buchclub Tag 2. Tschü...ss!

Froschkönig and Gretel: Tschü...ss! (together)

Zauberin opened the second meeting with introductions and read the first prompt question aloud. This opened the floor to all club members to share their opinions about the development of the main character in the second portion of the excerpt. Responses to this 104 question were primarily declarative in nature rather than opinion-oriented, as club members listed off several details about the main character that they had either found out while reading the first portion or that they had encountered in the second part of the excerpt. Froschkönig, for example, explained that Momo had developed a significant amount and that they knew more about her, including a bit of her backstory at an orphanage before she left to live on her own.

Zauberin then expanded on the information that Froschkönig contributed, which helped to establish a collective understanding of what they had learned thus far about Momo (see Excerpt

11).

Unlike the first dialogue during which Zauberin maintained the role of moderator, Gretel adopted the moderator role shortly thereafter by transitioning from the thoughts the club members shared about the main character to a related topic of new characters in the excerpt.

Using the informal “you” form (du), they directed this question at Zauberin, who uttered an opinion about the new characters, followed by more declarative statements about the way the characters are portrayed in the excerpt. While Zauberin continued, Froschkönig and Gretel interjected by finishing Zauberin’s sentences and contributing additional relevant information.

This series of utterances and interjections illustrates one instance of collaborative negotiation of meaning and shows increased co-construction of meaning from the first to the second conversation. While they are not particularly interpretive in nature, the utterances do provide an example for how the participants experienced known and unknown aspects of the story thus far; that is, they engage in experiencing in part through collective recall and description of the characters and their significance to the overarching plot.

It was after this collaborative meaning making that a minor breakdown in communication occurred. While Zauberin, Froschkönig and Gretel described the new characters and the 105 information that these characters wished to find out about Momo, the fourth club member uttered a general opinion about the book that was not in alignment with the current topic of discussion.

This utterance came as an interjection while the other three club members were pausing to think of information to add to their previous thoughts on the new characters. Zauberin responded to this interjection with an affirmation (“ja genau” [yes, exactly]), which was followed by a second utterance from the fourth club member describing the book as sad. Zauberin responded again with an affirmation, but this time displayed some uncertainty in what to say next by uttering “ja, aber …” (yes, but …). Froschkönig attempted to bring the conversation back to the previous topic of information about Momo by explaining that Momo did not have any education. The other club members seemed a bit confused by this attempt at first. Zauberin asked “was?”

(what?), signaling that they either did not know what Froschkönig was referring to or what the term “Bildung” (education) meant. Froschkönig repeated the term, after which Zauberin indicated that she now understood, and the conversation about the characters in the excerpt resumed.

Gretel introduced the next topic by reading the prompt question aloud, which asked club members if this story reminded them of any other stories, books, or films that they had read or seen before. After everyone responded in the affirmative together, Gretel encouraged the club members to respond in more detail by first directing the question toward the fourth club member.

Each club member explained the ways in which Momo’s story was similar to others they had experienced. Froschkönig stated that they thought of Snow White, particularly because she ran away into nature. This example is yet another illustration of collaborative negotiation of meaning, as all three participants interjected during and affirmed one another’s explanations of why the characters of Snow White and Momo were similar. Here, Zauberin even corrected 106

Froschkönig after they used the English name for Snow White, preserving the German in their interaction.

This negotiation resulted in utterances that were interpretive and intertextual in nature, as participants began comparing the role of the stepmother in Snow White to that of the orphanage in Momo. Other utterances compared Momo to the stories of Madeleine, a French children’s series, and to the German film Lola rennt (Run Lola Run). The club members primarily used

Momo’s description, such as her solitude, and the adventure-like genre of the story to compare

Momo to other texts.

Finally, the conversation transitioned to speculations about what would happen next in the book. Here, questions proved particularly useful for participants to negotiate topics, seek affirmation from their club mates, and to encourage contributions from one another. For example, Gretel introduced this topic by asking about what the other club members thought about the böser Mann (evil man) that had been mentioned briefly in the excerpt. A brief negotiation about when they would find out more about this potential antagonist ensued, during which Zauberin asked the others if they thought it would be in the next chapter. While this was a minor instance of negotiation, it displays one way in which participants utilized questions to look for and gather affirmation from their club mates.

The fourth club member finally responded to these questions with the speculation that

Momo would die, which was quite unpopular with the rest of the club members. The fourth club member was not present for the first meeting and was often on the outside of the co-construction of meaning and collaborative scaffolding of the interaction. This response was heavily prompted by the scaffolding of the other group members, which seems to suggest that the interactions in 107 which learners are engaging are less centered on the knowledge process of experiencing from the perspective of the individual and more focused on the act of experiencing together.

All three expressed surprise at this speculation with exclamations and gasps. Although they were seemingly unhappy with the result, they did succeed in encouraging the fourth club member to interact with them through their questions. They recasted the original question concerning general opinions about what would happen next in several forms (i.e., do you have any opinions? Do you have any questions? Do you have predictions? etc.), which in turn offered several potential ways for them to gain access to the conversation. All of the club members then argued for the remainder (i.e., the last 30 seconds) of the meeting, interjecting at times to exclaim that Momo could not die and to explain why it is a possibility based on their impression of the book thus far. Zauberin brought the arguments to a halt by declaring the end of the meeting, regaining her role as moderator here in order to settle the disagreement.

Book Club Meeting #3

Interactions during the final book club meeting focused primarily on members’ overall opinions of the book that they developed while reading and discussing the excerpt. Experiencing here involved identifying specific aspects of the book that they found interesting or felt positively about. Participants referred to the topics they had interacted around in previous meetings as well as the characters, plot, and language use in the book in order to support the opinions they held after reading. There were also several instances of making connections between the experience of reading and interacting around this particular excerpt and the general experience of reading. The transcript of the third meeting can be found below in Excerpt 9.

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Excerpt 9

[00:00] Zauberin: Hallo alles. Willkommen zum Tag 3 um die uhm Buchclub. Meine

Name ist Mutter Gothel.

{omitted}

Gretel: Ich bin Gretel Strauss.

[00:13] Froschkönig: Hallo … (unintelligible) Hello … {laughter} =

[Deutsch!] {laughter}

= Ich bin Toby Hopper der Dritte. That came out so weird.

[00:21] Zauberin: Gut ganz gut. So uhm wir sprechen über Kapitel eins um Momo.

Uhm … wir haben vier Fragen zum diskus… diskutieren. Uhm

zuerst ist uhm “was ist Ihre Meinung über das Buch basiierend auf

dem ersten Kapitel? Mö…Mogen Sie es oder nicht?”

[00:48] Gretel: Uhm … in meiner Meinung ich denke die erste Kapitel uhm ist uh

beschreib- schreibend und neu- neugierig. So es was OK, ja.

[01:09] Froschkönig: Es war so so. =

Gretel: [so so ja]

= Ja. Ich denke es ist … nicht … like … nicht keine interessant =

[mhm]

= aber nicht uh … =

[sehr interessant]

= ja! Nicht sehr interessant. [laughter]

Zauberin: [genau genau]

[01:29] = Es ist so so. 109

Gretel: [ja so so]

[01:31] Zauberin: Ich denke wenn die uhm … uh … (unintelligible) … thats not …

das ist nicht die Wörter … uhm schlecht Männer kommt die bö …

böse Männer kommt es ist mehr interessant so Kapitel uh zwei

oder drei es ist besser. Und wir haben diskutieren uhm letzes

Audioaufnahme. Uhm … aber ich denke es … die Charakter

Momo war interessant und ich uhm … ich bin interessant zu

verstehen mehr über dieses Charakter. =

[ja]

= Uhm … so ja.

[02:16] Froschkönig: Ja sie ist ein interessant uh Charakter.

[02:19] Zauberin: Ja. Sie ist allein in ein großes Stadt. Wir wissen nicht =

[ja]

= was sie kann.

[02:24] Froschkönig: Sie ist einhundertzwei.

[02:27] {omitted}

[02:32] Zauberin: Ja … genau genau. Uhm so ich mag die Charakter Momo und ich

findet die … uhm … Sprache nicht interessant jetzt aber im mehr

Kapitel es ist besser. =

[ja ich … ]

[02:53] = So ok. Gut gut. Uhm “würden Sie das Buch wi- weiterlesen?

Warum , warum nicht?” 110

[03:03] Gretel: Uhm ja? Ich würde weiterlesen uh … weil … die (unintelligible)

seltsam sind sehr interessant so ich denke die Buch uhm will s- uh

würde interessant sein. Was denkst du Toby?

[03:27] Froschkönig: Ich auch würde weiterlesen ja. Ich liebe alle Bücher =

Zauberin: [Ja!]

= so [laugh] uhm ja es ist … ja I- ich würde weiter lesen.

{laughter}

[03:41] Zauberin: Ja. Ich denke uhm immer Bücher haben interessant Aspekte. Du

bist richtig. Alles Buch ist gut. Uhm

[0:03:53] Froschkönig: Ja es uhm hat gute uhm like Gesch… uhm =

Zauberin: [Stimmung?]

= uh Gesch uh Geschichteinstellung?

Zauberin: [ja!]

= like uhm mit die Architektur

Zauberin: [und all-]

= und die Leute und uhm ja and the ampitheater.

[04:14] Zauberin: True ja. Genau. Ok so dann “welchen Aspekt des Buche finden Sie

interessant oder nicht interessant?” So Toby du findst die

Architektur und die uhm =

[Ampitheater]

= Ampitheater und alles interessant.

Froschkönig: Ja.

{omitted} 111

[ja]

= auf Amerika auf Deutschland auf =

Zauberin: [alles]

= China =

[ja genau]

= China ist “China” right?

Zauberin: [China? ich denke, ich weiß nicht.]

Froschkönig: Die Architektur ist uh gute Geschichte. Uhm so ich finde es

interessant.

[04:59] Gretel: Aber ich bin ich bin … verwirrt aber sehr … (unintelligible)

charakterisch Sprachen. Warum =

[mmm]

… ja warum (unintelligible)

[ja ja ja]

[05:15] Zauberin: Ich finde es uhm uhm … interessant wenn die uhm alter Leute

kommt so einfach like wir sehen Momo und sie hat kein Hause und

keine Eltern und dann in Kapitel eins die die alter Leute kommt

und he- … bin sehr helfentlich. Und das ist interessant so =

Froschkönig: [Ja. Ja die Charaktere like uhm =]

= wie sagt man das?

Gretel: Ja die Charaktere uhm

[05:48] Zauberin: Ja.

Froschkönig: Die Charaktere-Interaktion 112

Zauberin: Danke!

[05:56] Froschkönig: Und uhm es ist schwer uhm weil es die erste Kapitel ist =

[Ja ich- ich auch]

= so ja, es ist interessant uhm bisher aber es ist nur =

Zauberin: [Mit mehr es ist besser.]

= die erste Ka- Kapitel ja.

Zauberin: Ja. Genau.

[06:20] Gretel: Uhm würden Sie das Buch wei- weiterempfehlen?

[06:24] Zauberin: Ja zu Kinder. Junger Leute.

[06:30] Froschkönig: Ja

[06:31] Gretel: Warum?

[06:33] Zauberin: So Momo ist ein Kinder und ich denke uh die … Schrei- Schreiber

hat =

Gretel: [uhm Erzähler]

= Erzähler hat uhm schreibt für Kinder =

[ja]

= aber ich weiß nicht.

[06:50] Froschkönig: Die uhm Überprüfung uh sagt uh die Buche war gut uhm für uhm

… uh like alte Leute =

Zauberin: [auch .. ja]

= Erwach… Erwachsene. =

[Erwachsene — {participants repeating the word}]

= Aber ich denke nicht. Ich denke es ist für Kinder. 113

[07:11] Gretel: Ich denke es ist für alles. Ist ein sehr interessant Thema so … =

Zauberin: [ja und auch we = ]

= so für alles

= wir wissen nicht uh das uhm Moral so die Moral kann uhm …

[Ja die- =]

= für Kinder oder wir wissen nicht.

[Ja ja ja]

{omitted}

[07:34] Zauberin: Ja. So so?

{omitted}

[07:40] Zauberin: Ok. So … das ist alles für die Buchclub. Tschüss!

[07:46] Gretel and Froschkönig: Tschüss!

{omitted}

After introducing themselves, each club member briefly expressed their opinion of the book based on their experience with the first chapter. Gretel described the chapter as descriptive and curious, and expressed some satisfaction with it by saying that it was “OK”. This seemingly neutral review was reiterated in Froschkönig’s opinion, as they chose a similar term to “OK” to describe their opinion and explained that the chapter was not uninteresting, yet not extremely interesting either. There was a noticeable decrease here in the number of affirmations that

Zauberin tended to use in the previous meetings while moderating in order to keep conversation moving, suggesting that the responsibilities associated with the role of moderator was shifting among other club members. 114

Interjections proved useful here for participants to identify aspects of one another's' opinions with which they agreed. Gretel, for example, indicated her agreeance with this review by repeating and affirming the term “so so” while Zauberin interjected two times, once to affirm

Froschkönig’s opinion and a second time to assist in the search for appropriate terminology.

The participants then expanded on these seemingly neutral opinions of the chapter by returning to a topic they discussed in detail during their first and second meetings. Zauberin provided an interpretive speculation that the book would become more interesting in the upcoming chapter once the “böse Männer” (evil men) play a larger role. Zauberin reminded the other club members that they discussed these characters in the previous audio assignment and reiterated her interest in the character Momo. This utterance sparked several responses and affirmations, primarily from Froschkönig, that indicated a shared interest in Momo both by describing her as interesting and by repeating language used in previous meetings to describe what they do and do not know about her at this point in the story.

The next prompt question called on participants to consider whether they would continue reading the book or not, and ultimately facilitated making connections between this particular experience to the general experience of reading. Froschkönig illustrates this by stating that they love all books in order to support the fact that they would continue reading the book. Zauberin makes this connection as well with several affirmations of Froschkönig’s statement and by explaining that books always have interesting elements.

These utterances acted as key instances of co-constructed experiencing between participants in which they considered the content of the excerpt, the opinions they expressed throughout the book club experience, as well as their general feelings towards reading. While the opinions they expressed at the beginning of this final meeting were neutral in nature, they 115 recognized that their interest in reading coupled with the points of interest in the book would encourage them to continue reading. While the opinions they expressed were similarly co- constructed and scaffolded as they were in the previous meetings, this instance illustrates the influence of prior experiences on these co-constructed opinions and interpretations within interaction.

During the final segment of the meeting, participants talked about the age groups to which they would recommend the book. This particular prompt question was designed to encourage participants to use the content of the excerpt and the topics of discussion from their meetings in order to determine what kind of audience would enjoy the book. Zauberin offered the first opinion, stating that they would recommend it to children or young people because

Momo herself is a child, and that they believed the author wrote the book for children.

Froschkönig shared this view and pitted their opinion against the initial claim in the book synopsis that the story was a good fit for older audiences. Gretel was the only participant that determined the book would be appropriate for audiences of all ages, reiterating that the story involves interesting themes. After hearing these arguments, Zauberin acknowledges that there is still much that they do not know about the rest of the book, including its moral and its intended audience. This instance demonstrates a point at which each of the group members move beyond opinion-based, experiencing-oriented interaction into the beginnings of analyzing the connections between the generic concept of a moral that they encountered numerous times prior to this text and the intended audience of the text.

The final segment provides an example of how participants’ opinions evolved during and as a result of interaction. Zauberin responded quickly to the initial prompt question, indicating a sense of certainty that the book was meant for children. However, after Froschkönig referred to 116 the book synopsis and Gretel expressed a different interpretation on the intended audience,

Zauberin affirmed the possibility of Gretel’s interpretation.

The members of this book club demonstrated a variety of interactional moves throughout these three meetings that ultimately contributed towards collaborative or co-constructed experiencing of the text. While a large amount of these moves consisted primarily of opinion- based utterances, these opinions often supported learners as they scaffolded the conversation and provided foundations off of which all group members could build. Affirmation played a large role in moderating the conversation and was increasingly used by all of the group members as they established a shared experience of the text rather than just by the moderator. This led to a shift in roles as each group member reacted to the opinions of others at different points across meetings. There were several instances of perspective-taking and interpretation that suggested a move from the well-scaffolded interaction based on experiencing to moments of analyzing that involved speculation on and consideration for the social context surrounding the creation of the text.

Discussion

There were three primary objectives for the detailed analysis of interaction during multiliteracies experiencing activities: 1) to describe the ways learners use and experiment with language during interaction; 2) to identify interactional affordances of experiencing activities, and 3) to investigate ways in which interactional language produced during experiencing activities contributes to the design and implementation of the other knowledge processes. I organize and discuss the findings from this analysis below based on these three objectives.

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The Interactional Face of Experiencing Texts

The role of experiencing within multiliteracies pedagogies is often theorized in general terms as the stage in which learners consider and reflect on their own concrete, lived experiences, identify and record new information, and experiment with unfamiliar elements in order to gain new knowledge and an expanded sense of certainty in this knowledge (Cope &

Kalantzis, 2015; Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, & Dalley-Trim, 2016). While involved with their book clubs and public forums, learners were able to experience texts through interaction by expressing and comparing opinions, describing and narrating characters, plotlines, and situations, speculating on remaining content and uncertainties, and interpreting content and experiences in order to connect it with their personal realities. They engaged regularly in collaborative meaning making, which involved searching for and identifying appropriate language for the social and textual context, interjecting in order to affirm and complete each other’s statements, and negotiating topics of discussion which involved coming to agreements as well as coming to terms with opinions that did not align completely with their own.

Opinions informed the majority of these practices and acted as a point from which students ventured into the other aforementioned practices. These opinions were fueled by the lived experiences of the character personas they inhabited; that is, the research students conducted in order to develop their character persona contributed to the choices they made while expressing opinions and eventually to other practices as well. The knowledge of linguistic structures that support opinion uttering as well as the knowledge they developed about their characters prior to the book clubs acted as familiar elements, or the known aspects of these interaction activities. Learners relied primarily on structures that they encountered in previous 118 courses and in the current course prior to the simulation activities, which allowed them to communicate their thoughts and co-construct experiences of the text in familiar ways.

Blurring Lines between Experiencing, Analyzing, Conceptualizing, and Applying

Analyzing the interaction that took place during these experiencing activities allowed for an investigation into how this knowledge process contributes to and even facilitates the transition into activities considered to be more indicative of the remaining knowledge processes, particularly conceptualizing and analyzing. The simulation context called for participants to adopt a fairytale persona and the various character-development activities encouraged them to think about how they would act out this persona during interaction. It was expected that, because students spent the first simulation researching, developing, and creating the background and present realities of their characters, they would be somewhat deliberate about portraying these realities through detailed moments of perspective-taking. While instances of perspective taking were fewer than anticipated, those that did arise created opportunities for the participants to move beyond the concrete, evaluative process of experiencing texts into the abstract, theoretical process of analyzing. For example, Hänsel identified a key similarity between Momo and himself, the experience of being without parents as a child, and the memories it evoked as the reason for why he did not particularly enjoy the excerpt. This act of perspective taking called on the participant to consider not only the similarities in physical realities that these characters faced, but the emotional and relational realities that they had in common as well. The participant playing Hänsel began at this point to theorize the way this character would react to Momo’s situation, transitioning from describing Momo’s lonely experience to analyzing the trauma that

Hänsel faced after being abandoned by his parents. 119

The final prompt question for the third book club meeting asked participants to determine if they would recommend the book and to whom. While the first portion of this question typically encouraged evaluative opinions, determining an audience that would likely enjoy the book involved interpreting the content of the book and the various points discussed during all of the interactions. Participants interpreted the text they had read differently and explained why they believed the author intended the book to be read by children, adults, or by any age group.

Despite differences in opinion, participants were inclined to understand and participate in the interpretations of their club mates, as was illustrated by the exchange between Zauberin, Gretel, and Froschkönig and Zauberin’s active reconsideration of her own interpretation after the others supported their own. These instances of interpretation, along with others that called on participants to theorize, to reason, and to predict based on the knowledge they gained throughout the simulation process, provided a starting point for in-depth analyzing activities that could be picked up if more time was planned for this particular text.

Students rarely established the need to repair their language use during interaction.

Instead, when they encountered a situation in which they did not know how to say something or said something in error, they searched collaboratively for vocabulary and structures that fit appropriately within their conversation. They also did not dwell long on these moments and tended to continue on with the discussion topic as soon as an acceptable word was found. In these moments, students conceptualized collaboratively about language that would facilitate their interaction.

I purposefully designed the interaction activities for this dissertation project to include prompts that encouraged learners to experiment with and expand the knowledge they already had about the German language, the character personas they adopted, and the content of the texts 120 they encountered. By providing small pockets in which they could begin to conceptualize and analyze within the familiar context of experiencing, these activities also created connections between the knowledge processes of multiliteracies that are so often interpreted as categories rather than “moves” within learning cycle (Cope & Kalantzis, 2015, p. 17).

Interactional Affordances of Experiencing

In viewing these interactional data through a Conversation Analysis lens, it was possible to demonstrate structural, linguistic, and multimodal practices of language as tools that organized multiliteracies-oriented interaction, and that ultimately shape the practice of interactional literacies. These practices were useful in identifying affordances for interaction.

Before engaging in any interactional activities, participants immersed themselves in self- guided research concerning the cultural, social, and historical representation of their characters.

This research took the form of analyzing functionally and critically, and afforded knowledge that students could draw upon in order to engage in perspective taking while they interacted with one another during experiencing activities. A strong example of this was provided by Hänsel when they thought back on the memories of their childhood that they had created while researching and developing the character. They referred to the feeling of being left alone and leaving their home during the book club as well as the public forum activities and used these emotions to sympathize with the individuals represented in the texts. The interactional practice of Perspective

Taking, as well as engaging in character development prior to interaction, afforded the use of language that connects emotion with past experiences.

It was also apparent that interactional practices that occurred more often afforded those that facilitated movement between knowledge processes. While uttering opinions, students relied 121 on evaluative and descriptive language to make their thoughts on the texts clear to their groups.

In some instances, students expanded upon their own opinions or those of others with interpretive language. While talking about the monument in the public forum, for example, Jäger explained that it was a nice piece of art, but also expanded on this opinion by saying that it is a piece of culture that describes friendship between three cultures (i.e., referring to the different languages on the monument). Gretel responded to this by adding the word “Gemeinschaft”

(community) to this interpretation. By expressing opinions, students were able to identify points on which they wanted to elaborate further and encouraged other students to build off of these opinions and interpretations.

Conclusions

According to van Lier (2013), “Conversational interaction naturally links the known to the new. It creates its own expectancies and its own context and offers choices to the participants” (p. 171). It seems appropriate, then, that the curricular design and implementation of experiencing activities within a multiliteracies pedagogy should encourage learners to experiment with ways to make meaning through interaction. The analysis presented here responds directly to a need for detailed examples of the actual language learning practices that occur during multiliteracies activities, particularly those described as experiencing. When provided with scaffolded simulation scenarios and prompts, as well as the opportunity to practice interaction multiple times in small group settings, learners engaged in evaluative interactional practices (e.g., expressing opinions, affirming statements, etc.) that often afforded interpretive practices (e.g., negotiating meaning, perspective taking, expanding on opinions, etc.). The detailed description and analysis of these interactions provides several examples of peer-to-peer 122 scaffolding during face-to-face interaction in multiliteracies lessons, demonstrates how learners go about using language during these interaction-focused experiencing activities, and ultimately how to identify points at which transitions can be made between processes of experiencing, conceptualizing, analyzing, and applying.

Future research that investigates the ways in which interaction and interactional literacies can be practiced during multiliteracies-based second language learning activities should consider the prominence of new technologies in day-to-day communication. The following chapter outlines one approach to this area of research and focuses on the use of online chat as a medium for interacting around and within texts.

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CHAPTER 4: EXPERIENCING THROUGH INTERACTION IN DIGITAL SPACES

Introduction

In Chapter 3, I described various ways in which interactional literacies manifested themselves during predominantly spontaneous, face-to-face interactions. For the current chapter,

I shifted the focus of this investigation into interactional literacies to the emergence of these practices during multiliteracies-based digital interaction activities. The chosen medium was that of digital chat, primarily because it is increasingly considered an orate, conversational mode of communication due to its brief, quasi-synchronous, and multimodal nature (Kern, 2014, 2015), as well as its similarity to other interactional digital media (i.e., text messaging, direct messaging

[DM]). The analysis of data collected from these digital interactions was guided by the following research questions:

1. What are the interactional affordances of experiencing activities that emphasize

digitally mediated synchronous interaction?

2. What kind of language use characterizes digital interaction that takes place during

these experiencing activities and how does it compare to face-to-face activities?

3. In what ways does interactional language use that occurs during these digitally

mediated experiencing activities contribute to the design and carrying out of

analyzing, conceptualizing, and applying activities?

I first provide an overview of the instructional context and multiliteracies-based pedagogical design of the digital interaction activities I designed as part of this dissertation project. I then briefly discuss the process by which I collected and analyzed the data from the digital chat sessions. Before delving into instances of specific codes, I describe the visible patterns that emerged from the entire data pool, focusing on the codes that were applied most 124 frequently and those that were missing from this kind of digital interaction. This macro-level analysis is followed by a detailed, sample analysis of one Google Hangouts chat between two participants. This single example acts as an illustration of interactional tendencies that were common among participants. I then describe the analysis of these tendencies in more detail by breaking down the codes that were used to signal their emergence in the data and providing examples from the majority of the chat transcripts. In the discussion section, I synthesize these tendencies as micro-practices that learners engaged in or did not engage in during digital interaction and compare these patterns in digital language use to those that were identified in the face-to-face data presented in Chapter 3. I also devote a portion of the discussion to ways in which the pedagogical design impacted the choices that participants made about their language as well as the moments in which participants transitioned from the intended knowledge process of experiencing to analytical learning processes.

Pedagogical Context

The multiliteracies-based simulations designed for this dissertation project featured two synchronous digital interaction activities. The first was placed at the end of Simulation 1, the simulation during which students developed a persona for their chosen character based on the research they conducted over the weekend before the start of the simulation, as well as on the new information they gathered over the course of the week for Simulation 1. The second occurred as the last activity of Simulation 2. During this simulation, students participated in a hybrid, fairytale book club for which they read the first chapter of Momo, a German novel by

Michael Ende. In the following sections, I provide a brief outline of these first two simulations 125 and describe where these synchronous digital interaction activities fit in relation to other simulation activities.

Prompts for Experiencing and Beyond

A majority of the prompt questions called for students to reflect back on their experience while reading or viewing and conversing about the text at hand and to express their opinions of this experience (i.e., Did you like the chapter? Which aspects did you find interesting? What other opinions do you have? Did you enjoy the conversations in your book club?). I expected to see largely evaluative responses in which students uttered opinions and described their experience using the modal verb “mögen” (to like), the adverb “gern” (gladly, like to), and other verbs that express thought like “finden” (to find, think), “glauben” (to think, believe), and

“denken” (to think). There were also several questions designed to encourage students to move a step beyond these processes of reflecting on their own opinions (i.e., To what extent did you find the story fairytale-esque? Do you and your conversation partner agree?). These questions were intended to evoke opportunities for identifying intertextuality between Momo and the texts from which the characters originated while also engaging in perspective taking (i.e., a participant who was taking the perspective of the magic mirror from Snow White might compare Momo’s ability to do magic with their own abilities). However, these two questions were actually approached by the students as an opportunity to reflect on their experience with the text from their own perspective as opposed to their characters’. These questions pushed students to consider the ways in which the opinions they held and expressed about a text are shaped by not only its content, but by the connections it has to other texts, in this case to Märchen (fairy tales, folk tales), and to the opinions of their classmates. By doing so, it was expected that students would briefly engage in 126 practices like interpreting and discovering patterns, which would potentially transition their language use into processes of analyzing and conceptualizing.

Analyzing Interactional Literacies in Digital Spaces

Using the coding system described in Chapter 2, I identified and described the ways in which participants used language and other modes of communication to interact with their peers in a digital setting. Because this digital chat context affords multimodal expression (e.g., memes, hyperlinks, emoticons, etc.) (Kern, 2015), there were several additional codes for this analysis that helped to identify its actual occurrence during interaction (see Table 7). I analyzed a total of

12 Google Hangouts transcripts using this coding system: 7 transcripts from the first digital interaction activity in Simulation 1 and 5 transcripts from the second digital interaction activity in Simulation 2. Of these 12 transcripts that were analyzed, one was omitted as it was a conversation between a nonconsenting student and the course instructor, a native speaker of

German.

Table 7 Codes for Digital Interaction Data Analysis

Face-to-Face and Digital Interaction Data

Code Description

Opening Terms, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that indicate the beginning of an interaction (e.g., “Hallo”[“Hello”], “Guten Morgen” [“Good morning”], “Wie geht’s? [“How are you?”])

Adjacency Two utterances from two different speakers, the first of which initiates the Pair second (e.g., “Hallo” [“Hello”], “Guten Tag!” [“Good afternoon!”]; “Wie geht’s?” [“How are you?”], “Es geht mir gut.” [“I’m doing well”])

Initiate Words or nonlinguistic cues that help a speaker end an interaction (e.g.,“Ich Closing muss gehen” [“I have to go”], “Das ist alles” [“That’s all”]) 127

Face-to-Face and Digital Interaction Data

Code Description

Closing Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that actively end an interaction (e.g., “Tschüss” [“Bye”], “Ciao” [Bye], “Auf Wiedersehen [“Goodbye”, “Until next we see each other”], a physical handwave)

Topic A statement or question that draws the attention of the participants to a new Introduction topic for discussion (e.g., “So was denken Sie über/zu…?” [“So what do you think about / of…?”])

Opinion The description of emotions evoked by and reactions to a particular thing, Uttering activity, event, etc. (e.g., “Ich finde das Buch interessant” [“I find / I think the book is interesting”]

Topic Language or nonlinguistic cues that assist in coming to a consensus, resolving Negotiation a problem, or accomplishing a task (e.g., “Ich denke…” [“I think”], “Warum?” [“Why?”], etc.)

Interpretation / Language or nonlinguistic cues that describe underlying meanings of a Expand on concept, character, symbol, text, etc. (e.g., “Ich denke …, weil/dass…” [“I Interpretation think … , because / that …”])

Perspective Language or nonlinguistic cues that indicates a shift in point of view that Taking allows the participant to speak as the character they are performing

Codeswitching Instances in which participants alternate between German and English

Word Search / Instances in which participants indicate that they do not know a particular Creation word and / or pause to consider which word to use (e.g., “Wie sagt man das auf Deutsch?” [How does one say that in German?])

Repair Instances in which a statement containing an error is modified or corrected (e.g., “Sie sind… sie ist tot” [“The are … she is dead”])

Affirmation Words, phrases, or nonlinguistic cues that validate a statement from another participant (e.g, “Ja!” [“Ja!”], “Ich stimme dir zu” [“I agree with you”])

Finish An interjection in which a participant completes the statement of another Sentence participant before they can finish their utterance

Digital Interaction Data Only

Emoji Support “Pictographs that add a non-verbal affective dimension to online communication” (Kern, 2015, p. 179); The use of an icon or various characters that illustrate emotions and reactions that the user is trying to 128

convey (e.g., :), :-(, ��)

Written Instances in which a speaker types out what would typically be a sound or Representation physical move made in reaction to something that is said during a spoken of Emotion / conversation (e.g., “mhm”, “ugh”, “haha”, “lol”) Reaction

Image Support The use of an image to illustrate or add to something said during the digital chat (e.g., digital photos, memes)

URL Support The use of a link or hyperlink to refer to something online that is relevant to the conversation (Gumperz & Hymes, 1972; Kearney, 2012; Lee, 2000; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973)

The coding process revealed 235 instances of various kinds of interactional language use

(see Figure 2). The most frequent use of language was devoted to Opinion Uttering (48), just as it was in the face-to-face interaction data. This was to be expected, considering the evaluative nature of the prompt questions that participants were given to help them navigate the conversation. Of notable importance are the instances of Perspective Taking (25) and

Interpretation (24); that is, approximately 20% of all coded language use involved, or at least initiated, the critical practices associated with analyzing and conceptualizing. I illustrate these instances in the examples provided later in this section. Participants’ use of Emojis (15), images

(1), and URLs (1) made up only 0.7% of language use during synchronous digital chat. Despite the capability of chat technology to support multiple modes of communication, the majority of participants relied on text to make meaning.

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Figure 2

Coded Segments in Google Hangouts Transcripts

Illustrating Interaction in Digital Spaces

Participants expressed their thoughts on Momo in a variety of ways during their Google

Hangouts chats. Some stuck closely to the structure that the prompt questions outlined. Others paraphrased or strayed from these questions as they saw fit. Some took advantage of multimodal expression, while others relied on text to carry their messages to their partners. In the following description of the data analysis, I first provide a general walkthrough of a single Google

Hangouts chat in order to demonstrate typical patterns in language use and conversational structure that occurred during digital interaction. I then turn to the description of individual codes to illustrate the wide array of approaches that participants adopted for these digital interaction activities; that is, each of these code descriptions features several examples from different

Google Hangouts chats. The selected codes illustrated below were chosen based on the number of Google Hangouts chats in which they appeared; that is, if at least three chats featured a particular kind of language use, it was selected for a detailed description. 130

Google Hangout #1: Rapunzel and Zauberin

These two participants began their conversation with a series of niceties, greeting one another and asking how the other was doing. In this exchange, there were several grammatical errors in Zauberin’s use of the phrase “es geht mir gut, und dir?” (I’m doing well, and you?); however, neither participant engaged in repair here. Rapunzel responded appropriately with “Mir geht es gut!” (I’m doing well!) within the next minute, confirming that they comprehended what

Zauberin meant and were familiar with the moves involved in a greeting. This tendency to overlook grammatical and lexical errors as well as typos occurred regularly throughout the conversation, as did the participants’ ability to comprehend one another’s contributions despite any errors.

Zauberin introduced all of the topics during the chat, adopting a similar role here to the moderator position they held during the book club meetings. Rather than read the prompt questions aloud, Zauberin paraphrased the questions and changed the register to align with the informal context of the interaction (see Excerpt 1). The prompt questions addressed the students in a formal register with the pronoun “Sie” (you, formal) which is the typical register used between instructor and student in German-speaking classrooms in the target culture. Zauberin’s decision to deformalize the register was indicative of their awareness that they were interacting with a peer in an informal setting.

Excerpt 1

Zauberin [9:33 PM]: Ganz gut, was denkst du über die Film Rotkäppchen?

Rapunzel [9:35 PM]: Ich denke der Film war gut aber ein bisschein dumm und du?

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Zauberin and Rapunzel engaged primarily in opinion uttering. They used verbs that are often associated with expressing opinions and thoughts such as “finden” (to find, think) and

“denken” (to think) as well as the verb “sein” (to be) followed by adjectives in order to describe various elements of the film (i.e., characters, costumes, mood). This process of opinion uttering also involved affirming and agreeing with one another’s ideas, which were often expressed through the phrase “Ich auch” (me too) and words such as “ja” (yes) and “genau” (exactly), or a combination of these. While these processes of uttering and affirming opinions were quite similar between the face-to-face and digital interaction context, the digital did facilitate a single instance of Emoji use here to further describe one’s thoughts in an otherwise paralinguistically limited interactional setting. Zauberin entered the Emoji that depicts “crying from laughter” after affirming Rapunzel’s negative opinion of the costumes for two of the main characters in the film

(see Excerpt 2). This particular Emoji helped to illustrate how humorous they found Rapunzel’s comment about the costumes.

Excerpt 2

Zauberin [9:36 PM]: Ich finde der Film lustig. Ich denke die Wolf und Fuchs war sehr

unheimlich.

Rapunzel [9:38 PM]: jahr, die Wolf und Fuchs Kostüme war sehr ungerade

Zauberin [9:43 PM]: Genau , was du denkst war die Moral um die Film?

While chatting about the moral of the film version of Rotkäppchen, these participants signaled a point at which interaction could potentially move beyond the sharing of opinions and into interpretive discussion. Rapunzel mentioned that the moral was not to speak to strangers, a moral often attributed to the story of Little Red Riding Hood. Zauberin expressed her agreement 132 with this idea before expanding the moral to include not to walk alone in the woods (see Excerpt

3). This short exchange of ideas cannot be described as analyzing, as it is more indicative of the participants’ reflection on the moral that was introduced during class while reading the Grimm version of the fairy tale. It also does not entertain the various political and social undertones that students were made aware of while talking about the film in class. However, the process of synthesizing elements of a story in order to determine why it was written or what purpose it played in the sociohistorical context in which it was written does provide a transition into conceptualizing and eventually analyzing.

Excerpt 3

Rapunzel [9:45 PM]: ic denke die moral um die Film ist, mann musst nicht zu Fremde

Sprechen.

Zauberin [9:49 PM]: Ja, ich auch. Und zu nie allein im Wald zu gehen. Insgesamt

würdest du den Film nochmal sehen?

There were two instances of Perspective Taking that occurred during the closing segment of the interaction. After agreeing that they would watch the film again, Zauberin mentioned that they could watch it again with their new roommate at their apartment in Kassel. In this instance,

Zauberin immersed themselves in the simulated setting by thinking back on the various realities that they developed for their character in Kassel (i.e., that they live in an apartment, they have a roommate). The second instance happened directly after this when Zauberin initiated the close of the conversation. They explained that they needed to go have dinner and that they made vegetable soup from their garden (see Excerpt 4).

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Excerpt 4

Rapunzel [9:53 PM]: Ja!, ich würde den film nochmal sehen.

Zauberin [9:58 PM]: Ich auch, Ich kann shauen mit meine neues Mitbewohner im meine

Wohnung im Kassel.

Rapunzel [9:59 PM]: ja! Das würde spaß machen

Zauberin [10:02 PM]: Ja, ich muss zum Abendessen gehen. Ich esse Gemüsesuppe aus

meinem Garten, tschüs!

This statement reflects the personal information that Zauberin included in their neighborhood app profile, in which they depicted themselves as an experienced, educated, and entrepreneurial gardener. Here, the participant fully adopted the persona they had developed for

Zauberin by closing the conversation in a way that was consistent with the character’s personality and choices.

Opinion Uttering

The expression and description of opinions played a large role across the data from both

Google Hangouts activities. The high frequency of this kind of language use was expected, particularly because the prompt questions encouraged students to consider how they reacted to various aspects of the texts and explicitly asked them to express these thoughts to their chat partners. Participants experimented with a number of ways to do this, and often used two or more structures connected to the speech act of opinion uttering in one turn. One approach favored the verb “sein” (to be) and took the form of a descriptive statement about various aspects of the texts

(see Excerpt 5).

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Excerpt 5

Jäger [4:27 PM]: Ich liebe das film. Mein lieblings Charakter war die Bär. Er was sehr

lustig! Ich dachte der Wolf war scaurig auch.

Königssohn (from Cinderella) [4:30 PM]: Ich mag die Kostueme. sie war sehr

realistisch. Auch der Fuchs und Wolf Schauspieler war sehr erschreckend. Was denkst du

ueber die Schauspieler?

Here Jäger and Königssohn both implemented the word “war” (was), the simple past form of the verb “sein” while describing what they thought of the characters and the costumes that the actors wore to portray them. This approach provided the opportunity to practice finding, experimenting with, and ultimately to expand their knowledge of adjectives. Participants were able to experiment with this vocabulary while maintaining a relatively low cognitive load through familiar sentence structure; that is, although they stuck to a sentence structure with which they had a fair amount of experience (i.e., subject-verb-object), they were able to create some complexity through the vocabulary they chose.

Participants also used verbs like “denken” (to think), “finden” (to find, think), and the modal verb “mögen” (to like) to express their thoughts during chat, all of which are commonly associated with expressing one’s opinions, likes, and dislikes in German. Occasionally, participants used the verb “lieben” (to love), a verb that is not typically among those mentioned above. This verb is often associated with more extreme reactions to something as well as romantic or familial emotions of love; however, it is not uncommon for it to be used while talking about something one feels strongly about. They also experimented with the tense of these verbs, switching the focus from their present description of their opinions to the reactions they 135 felt at the time of viewing or reading the text. In the previous excerpt, for example, Jäger first expressed that he loves the film using the present tense form of “lieben” but switched tenses in his use of “dachte”, the simple past form of “denken”, to explain that he thought the wolf was creepy.

Several participants also experimented with negation and punctuation in order to express their opinions. For example, Hänsel’s opinion of the excerpt from Momo was relatively negative because of the similarities they saw between circumstances of their childhood and the main character’s experience as a child without a family. They expressed this opinion by negating many of the same verbs I mentioned previously with the adverb “nicht” (not) and through the use of adjectives that are typically associated with negative evaluations, such as “schwer” (difficult) and “langweilig” (boring, dull) (see Excerpt 6).

Excerpt 6

Hänsel [9:02 PM]: Bisher mag ich das Buch nicht, weil es Erinnerung ausgelöst.....Wann

mein Vater hatte mein Schwester und mich ins Wald hinterlassen.

{Omitted}

Hänsel [9:06 PM]: ja das stimmt! Ich denke dass die Handlung nicht so interessant ist

und schwer zu folgen ABER die Autor beschreibt das Ort sehr gut! *der Ort

Hänsel’s use of punctuation and font format, in this case the ellipsis and capital letters, facilitated their ability to express this negativity and uncertainty they felt towards the book as well. By using the ellipsis, they indicated a pause during which reflection could occur and created anticipation for the statement that follows. In this case, Hänsel introduced the reason for their negative reaction to the excerpt (i.e., it evokes memories), but separated the actual recall of 136 the memory from this initial statement with the ellipsis. Hänsel used their second turn to expand on why they did not like the book after reading this excerpt, citing the uninteresting and hard-to- follow plot; however, they also provided positive feedback on the author’s ability to describe the setting. They signal this switch from negative to positive with the word “aber” (but) typed in all capital letters (“ABER”).

A second example of ellipsis appeared while Froschkönig uttered their opinion of Momo during Google Hangouts #2 (see Excerpt 7). Like Hänsel, they too seemed to be uncertain in their opinion of the book. They stated that they thought it was good but used the ellipsis to distance this part of their opinion from a somewhat negative evaluation of the book as “not the best”. They used the ellipsis a second time after stating that they would like to know what happens next, creating a visual representation of a pause before asking about their partner’s thoughts.

Excerpt 7

Froschkönig [3:22 PM]: Ich auch! Ich habe gelesen

Es war gut...nicht die Beste, aber es war interessant.

Ich möchte kenne, was also nächstes passieren wird....

Was denkst du?

*als

Participants implemented a variety of strategies to construct and utter opinions from the perspective of their character persona during digital chat. They recycled and experimented with verb forms they had encountered at various points in their German courses as well as in the prompt questions, sought out new, descriptive vocabulary that helped them articulate their 137 reactions to the texts, and took advantage of the ability of punctuation and formatting to mirror verbal and gestural cues. These acts were often combined and implemented within single turns, illustrating that participants did not tend to stick only to what they were familiar with. Instead, they expanded upon their knowledge about how to express their thoughts and opinions and engaged in experiencing the new.

Affirmation

Participants experimented with various ways of acknowledging their partners’ opinions and interpretations through affirmation. Using terms like “genau” (exactly), “ja” (yes), and

“auch” (also), they made connections between their own opinions and those of their partners while also indicating the validity and applicability of their partners’ statements. For example,

Froschkönig and Königssohn (from Sleeping Beauty) devoted a portion of their conversation to finding out more about one another during Google Hangouts #1. Königssohn indicated that their favorite place in Kassel was the woods, a statement which Froschkönig affirmed and agreed with through the use of “ah ja” and “auch” (see Excerpt 8).

Excerpt 8

Froschkönig: Was ist dein lieblingsort in Kassel?

Königssohn (from Sleeping Beauty) [11:21 PM]: Der Wald für mich :)

Froschkönig [11:22 PM]: Ah ja, Ich liebe die Wald auch. Meine Familie kommt aus dem

Wald.

Froschkönig’s affirmation served not only as an acknowledgement of the validity in

Königssohn’s opinion, but as a way to offer more information related to this opinion. In this instance, Froschkönig used it as an opportunity to point out a commonality in their shared 138 interest in the woods as well as a chance to personalize the topic by explaining a reason behind their own enjoyment of this place.

While agreement could be assumed through the use of terms like “ja”, “auch”, and

“genau”, there were also more explicit examples of affirmation and forms of agreement through words such as “stimmt” (I agree, true) and “wahr” (true). Froschkönig used the term “wahr” while responding to a statement their partner made concerning the significance of the

Amphitheater to the main character in Momo (see Excerpt 9).

Excerpt 9

Froschkönig [3:28 PM]: Ja, das ist wahr! Momo lebt in die Ampitheater.

Welche Aspekte des Buches fanden Sie interessant?

This more direct form of affirmation also occurred during Hänsel’s second Google

Hangouts chat when they agreed with their partner that what they had read of Momo so far was uninteresting and difficult to follow. They used the phrase “ja das stimmt!” (yes that’s right, yes that’s for sure) in response in order to show both that they agreed with these statements about the book and that they saw these statements as true or valid.

In general, affirmation seemed to act as a way to maintain cohesion and fluidity throughout digital interaction. By indicating that they agreed with a statement or found the statement particularly applicable to the discussion at hand, participants in turn signaled that they comprehended the point their partner was trying to make. This indicator of cohesion was particularly important in this synchronous chat environment, as chat participants were free to respond when they were able, often resulting in periods of several minutes between turns. After affirming a previous statement made by their partners, participants expanded this statement by 139 offering their own thoughts that connected to the topic at hand. Affirmation thus created opportunities to keep interaction going and prevented breaks in communication despite time gaps between messages.

Repair

There were relatively few instances of repair during digital interaction, despite the regular occurrence of grammatical, lexical, and orthographic errors in participants’ chat messages.

Neither the sender nor the recipient of messages containing errors tended to draw attention to them. Instead, participants continued their conversations with little to no indication that these errors affected their comprehension of what the other was trying to say. The few instances that did occur often involved the message sender typing a follow-up message to the message that contained the error. Froschkönig engaged in repair during Google Hangouts #2 while explaining their desire to know more about what would happen next in Momo (see Excerpt 10).

Excerpt 10

Froschkönig [3:22 PM]: Ich auch! Ich habe gelesen

Es war gut...nicht die Beste, aber es war interessant.

Ich möchte kenne, was also nächstes passieren wird....

Was denkst du?

*als

Here, Froschkönig repaired their use of “also” by typing the preposition “als” next to an asterisk. In digital spaces of communication, the asterisk has come to indicate that a typo or misuse was made in a previous message and to signal the correction of this mistake. Other participants did not use the asterisk to signal their correction (see Excerpt 11). While explaining 140 their ideas related to the moral of the film Rotkäppchen in Google Hangouts #1, Müllerstochter used the conjunction “aber” rather than the preposition “über” to ask their partner about what they thought of the moral and quickly sent a message containing the correction before their partner responded to the question.

Excerpt 11

Müllerstochter [4:18 PM]: ja ich denke die Oma und Rotkäppchen mehr Vorsichtig

sollen

was denkst aber die Moral

Über

One additional instance of repair came not in the form of lexical or grammatical error correction, but as a repair of the simulation context. While exchanging opening remarks in

Google Hangouts #1, Königssohn (from Sleeping Beauty) addressed the participant assuming the role of Froschkönig as their real name (see Excerpt 12).

Excerpt 12

Froschkönig [11:10 PM]: Hallo!

Königssohn (from Sleeping Beauty) [11:11 PM]: Guten abend {omitted}, wie geht's?

Froschkönig [11:12 PM]: Ich bin gut! Aber, Ich bin Toby Hopper III, der

Froschkönig! *ribbit*

Königssohn [11:12 PM]: Ja! Ich bin Hans Stark

Es tut mir Leid

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This was the only instance throughout all of the digital interaction data in which a participant engaged in repair on behalf of another participant. Rather than threaten Königssohn’s face by focusing only on the fact that they did not use the appropriate name, Froschkönig responded to the greeting first before reminding Königssohn that they were in fact “Toby Hopper

III”. They followed this with onomatopoeia, the typed-out form of the typical sound a frog makes, thus establishing that they were fully immersed in their character persona. After this comment, Königssohn acknowledged their mistake, presented themselves as their character, and apologized. Froschkönig’s repair allowed both participants to explicitly establish the simulation context.

Topic Introduction

Because participants were provided prompt questions to help guide their digital interactions, it was expected that Topic Introduction would occur by means of restating these questions; however, the word-for-word restating of the prompts was not the main approach to introducing topics for conversation. Instead, participants tended to paraphrase, reorganize, and even add to the prompt questions as they saw fit. Hänsel, for example, introduced the first topic during their second Google Hangouts by asking their partner if they were familiar with the book

Momo (see Excerpt 13). The prompt questions did not call on students to open their conversations in any particular way, but Hänsel found it important to first establish a shared knowledge of the text, or at least to perform this portion of the conversation as if they did not know whether their partner had participated in a book club.

Excerpt 13

Hänsel [8:54 PM]: Das ist wunderbar! Ich gehe auch gut! Ich habe das ersten Kapitel

von Momo gelesen! Kennst du das Buch? 142

Throughout the rest of their chat, Hänsel and their partner took turns asking questions from the list of prompts but reframed them using the present tense in order to incorporate them into the flow of their conversation (see Excerpt 14). Rather than read the prompt question in its original past tense form, Hänsel used the present tense form “findest” (you find, think). In doing so, they focused their conversation on expressing and making meaning together based on their current thoughts related to the text. This also left space for participants to reflect on their initial reactions to the text and if these thoughts still held true now that they were discussing them.

Excerpt 14

Hänsel [9:14 PM]: Hahaha! Nein Nein! Du hast Recht! Ich habe das gleiche gedacht.

Findest du die Geschichte Märchenhaft?

This tendency to change the tense of the questions seemed to create cohesion and consistency between questions; that is, both Hänsel and their partner responded to these reframed questions using the present tense and tended to expand on and react to each other's' thoughts and opinions before moving on to the next question. This was not always the case during instances in which participants used the original form of the prompt questions. Froschkönig, for example, restated the original form of the prompt question that was concerned with the aspects of the book that participants found interesting (see Excerpt 15).

Excerpt 15

Froschkönig [3:28 PM]: Ja, das ist wahr! Momo lebt in die Ampitheater. Welche

Aspekte des Buches fanden Sie interessant?

143

This question was written using the verb, “fanden”, the simple past tense form of

“finden”. Instead of responding in the simple past tense, though, Froschkönig’s partner continued the conversation in present tense and Froschkönig followed suit while describing the aspects they found interesting. This inconsistency in tense suggests a tendency for participants to rely on the familiarity they had with the present tense and their knowledge of its appropriateness for expressing thoughts and opinions that they still held.

Topic Negotiation

As I mentioned previously, participants did not always respond to questions and move onto the next prompt without first engaging in some additional dialogue around their opinions.

Some of this time was spent negotiating meaning; that is, participants went into further detail, asked follow-up questions, and resolved uncertainties about their partners’ opinions and various aspects of the text. Hänsel’s chat during Google Hangouts #2 provides several detailed examples of negotiation. Despite a generally unfavorable outlook on Momo, there were several instances in which Hänsel and their chat partner negotiated meaning and came up with potential solutions for improving their attitude towards the story. While explaining that the plot was not particularly interesting, for example, Hänsel identified a redeeming quality in the author’s ability to describe the places featured in the excerpt. In doing so, they wrote “ABER” (but) in all capitalized letters to signal that they were shifting their focus from the negative aspects to this enjoyable element

(see previous Excerpt).

In the next instance of negotiation, the other student explained that they did not think of this story as a fairy tale, a point with which Hänsel agreed. Hänsel then rationalized that, although Momo did have magical abilities, the story was lacking a moral, which was identified during class as a defining feature of the Grimm fairy tales. However, the two characters 144 acknowledged that their opinions could change and came to the conclusion that they should both continue reading to see what happens and to leave open this possibility (see Excerpt 16). During this negotiation of meaning, the participants used words that are often associated with uncertainty and less urgency, such as “vielleicht” (maybe, perhaps), “sollen” (should), and

“ändern” (to change, modify).

Excerpt 16

Hänsel [9:22 PM]: Bisher denke ich auch nicht. Obwohl Momo Magie hat, sehe ich

keine Moral bis jetzt. Also, vielleicht ändere ich meine Meinung später.

At the end of this period of negotiation and the interaction itself, both Hänsel and their partner utilized Emoji to illustrate and add to their statements. Hänsel entered an Emoji that is typically used to depict boredom when they explained that it would be boring to keep reading if their opinions about the book did not change (see Excerpt 17). This Emoji aligned well with the chosen language, particularly with the word “langweilig” (boring), as it is depicted mid-yawn and its eyes are closed. Hänsel’s partner then initiated the close of the conversation and used a smiling Emoji alongside their goodbye. Hänsel included the same Emoji in their final turn while saying goodbye, concluding the interaction on a visibly positive note and effectively enacting what may have been done in person with their own facial expressions.

Excerpt 17

Hänsel [9:27 PM]: Hoffentlich! Ansonsten wird es langweilig sein.

{Omitted}

Hänsel [9:29 PM]: Tschüss! Bis Morgen in Buchclub!

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Another participant, Müllerstochter, engaged in several instances of negotiation while they were trying to level with their partner on opinions about the character Momo and the experience of reading in general. Müllerstochter’s partner did a particularly in-depth job of speaking from the perspective of their character, who was a wealthy individual often depicted as one of several antagonists in the story from which they come. The language they chose often helped them come across as abrupt and often conceited. After making a negative comment about

Momo and mentioning that they would only read the book if their current romantic interest read it, Müllerstochter asked several questions while trying to defend Momo’s character (see Excerpt

18).

Excerpt 18

Müllerstochter [23 mins]: wow, so magst du kein Buch lesen?

ich denke Sie hat freunde, sie hat mehr freunde jezt dann

vor

{Omitted}

Müllerstochter [5 mins]: so Ihre Traum ist wenn Prince Charming liest dir vor?

With her first question, it seemed that Müllerstochter was trying to understand why their partner was averse to reading the book and to the characters in it. Müllerstochter presented an opposing argument to their partner’s statement about Momo’s lack of friends and tried to support their claim by explaining that Momo had made more friends than she had in previous parts of the excerpt. Müllerstochter’s partner explained that they only enjoyed being read to, so

Müllerstochter connected this trait with the earlier comment about only reading if their romantic interest read as well. After asking if it was their dream for this other character to read to them, 146

Müllerstochter’s partner agreed that this statement was true. Although these two characters did not come to a consensus on the status of Momo’s friends, Müllerstochter was able to establish a better understanding of their partner’s romantic obsession with another character through negotiation.

Interpretation

Participants primarily engaged in expressing their opinions through descriptive and declarative language use centered on the characters and plots of the texts they were assigned.

However, there were several instances during which they moved from illustrating their comprehension through their opinions into the realm of interpreting meaning behind and within the text. Rumpelstilzchen and Königssohn (from Snow White), for example, took their conversation about the moral of the film Rotkäppchen deeper than the question of what this moral was and whether or not it shared a moral with the Grimm version of the story. After explaining that they did not think the film presented a new moral, Rumpelstilzchen speculated on the ways in which the film reflected the political situation in East Germany during the 1960s (see

Excerpt 19). By using inquisitive language like the verb “sich wundern” (to wonder), they opened the floor for interpretation. Although Rumpelstilzchen did not make an inference on this topic, they did create an opportunity for interacting around the text on a deeper level than description.

Excerpt 19

Rumpelstilzchen: Neues als die Marchen, nein. Aber ich wundere mich wie diese

Version reflektier die Politik des ostdeutschland in diesem Ara 147

Königssohn (from Snow White): Ja, ich denke diese Version ziegt, wie ost

Deutschland ziegen wollte, dass sie bessere Filmmacher sind. Hast du den ersten

Filmabend in Kassel genossen?

Königssohn responded to this invitation for interpretation by stating that this version of

Rotkäppchen was an attempt by East Germany to display their superior film-making abilities, presumably in contrast to those of West Germany in this time period of social and political divide. Rather than expand on this interpretation or provide another perspective, Rumpelstilzchen agreed with Königssohn’s assessment with the phrase “das stimmt”. This instance of interpretation was short-lived, as Königssohn immediately moved onto the next prompt question about their film night experience.

The prompt question for Google Hangouts #2 that asked students to comment on the extent to which they found Momo “fairytale-esque” seemed to evoke some brief instances of interpretation as well. Hänsel, when asked this question by their chat partner, reasoned that, although Momo does have magical abilities, they could not see a moral at this point in the story

(see Excerpt 20).

Excerpt 20

Hänsel [9:22 PM]: Bisher denke ich auch nicht. Obwohl Momo Magie hat, sehe ich

keine Moral bis jetzt. Also, vielleicht ändere ich meine Meinung später.

During the first portion of this fourth semester German course, students shared their ideas during whole-class discussions on how one defines the genre of fairy tale, read several texts that introduced several traditional conventions and debunked common myths of this genre, and 148 drafted their own definitions in small groups. These experiencing and conceptualizing activities provided opportunities for students to synthesize their personal experience of the genre, the information they gathered while reading the texts about fairy tales, and the definitions that other groups constructed. Among the defining genre conventions that each definition had in common was the existence of a moral or message that the story aimed to present to its readers. Hänsel synthesized not only the various aspects of the character and the plot of this text, but the discussions and activities they engaged in prior to this digital interaction activity in order to find traits that would apply to the fairy tale genre.

Interpretation was among the top 5 most frequently coded kinds of language use during the digital interaction activities; however, its occurrence was far less frequent than that of

Opinion Uttering. When it did emerge, interpretation often coincided with instances of Topic

Introduction in which participants either expanded upon the existing prompt questions, as was illustrated in Rumpelstilzchen and Königssohn Google Hangouts #1 chat excerpt. Interpretation was also a result of and closely tied to the opinions that participants expressed in response to the prompt questions. Hänsel illustrated this through their initial response that Momo was not

“fairytale-esque”, which was followed by a synthesis of the elements that were lacking from the story that would align it with the genre of a fairy tale.

Perspective Taking

Perspective Taking involves “a shift of point of view at various levels of language and meaning” (Kearney, 2012, p. 61). In taking a perspective, learners have an opportunity to engage in meaning making using resources and strategies that they may not have been aware of or had access to from their own perspective. The digital interaction activities in this study were placed at the end of Simulations 1 and 2, after participants had engaged in research to develop their 149 characters’ backgrounds and personalities as well as face-to-face interactions to embody the perspective they had created. It was therefore expected that participants would continue making meaning from the assigned texts through the perspective of their character during digital interaction. However, language use that signaled instances of Perspective Taking were far fewer than those of Opinion Uttering; that is, participants did not tend to describe their thoughts about a text explicitly through their choice of linguistic structures, vocabulary, and general content.

Although the majority of participants identified themselves as their character persona at the beginning of each digital interaction activity, this switch in perspective from their own to their character’s did not seem to continue beyond this initial identification.

There were, however, several immersive examples of Perspective Taking that suggest the potential for multiliteracies-based digital interaction activities to support these kinds of “shift[s] in point of view” (Kearney, 2012, p. 61). Some of these examples were closely connected to the backgrounds and lives of the characters prior to relocating to Kassel. Hänsel’s negative opinion of Momo, for example, was partially grounded in the painful memories that the story evoked.

While sharing their initial reactions to and opinions of the excerpt during Google Hangouts #2,

Hänsel reflected on the realities of their childhood when their father abandoned them in the middle of the woods (see Excerpt 21); a memory that was also mentioned during the book club meetings. This repeated recollection of childhood memories signaled an instance of Perspective

Taking in which this participant established an awareness of the long-lasting effects of childhood experiences, and the ways in which these experiences can be relived through stories that feature characters with similar backgrounds.

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Excerpt 21

Hänsel [9:02 PM]: Bisher mag ich das Buch nicht, weil es Erinnerung ausgelöst.....Wann

mein Vater hatte mein Schwester und mich ins Wald hinterlassen.

Jäger engaged in a similar form of Perspective Taking while explaining their final thoughts on Momo during Google Hangouts #2. After explaining that they would need to experience more of the book before forming an opinion, they highlighted the connection they felt with Momo due to their naive nature when they were a child (see Excerpt 22). Jäger was not particularly specific about the realities of their childhood that warranted this description, but it nonetheless signaled a point at which this perspective facilitated a connection to the main character of the text.

Excerpt 22

Jäger (from Snow White) [2:36 PM]: Ich denke es ist gut aber ich wurde mehr lesen um

zu machen eine meinung. Obwohl ich eine Konnektion mit Momo fuhlen weil ich war

obdochlos auch wenn ich ein Kind war. Ich will zu lernen wie Zeitreisen ist in die

Geschichte

Froschkönig also connected opinions with memories while getting to know Königssohn

(from Sleeping Beauty) in Google Hangouts #1. These two characters found a common interest in the forest while discussing their favorite places in Kassel (see Excerpt 23). Here, Froschkönig attributes their love for the forest partially to the fact that their family is from the forest.

Although this memory is not quite as detailed as Hänsel’s, it does play a significant role in 151 creating an opportunity for Froschkönig to connect with the city of Kassel and make meaning out of the simulated places in which that they are interacting.

Excerpt 23

Froschkönig [11:17 PM]: … Was ist dein lieblingsort in Kassel?

Königssohn (from Sleeping Beauty) [11:21 PM]: Der Wald für mich :)

Froschkönig [11:22 PM]: Ah ja, Ich liebe die Wald auch. Meine Familie kommt aus dem

Wald.

Other instances illustrated tendencies to play with language and multimodal expression during Perspective Taking. In their first Google Hangouts chat, Hänsel and their partner started talking about the kind of films they would like to see featured during another “Filmabend (Film

Night) in Kassel. Their partner expressed interest in films and the physical appearance of

Leonardo DiCaprio. Hänsel explained that they look like Leonardo Dicaprio, according to other people, and used an Emoji that depicted a smirking face wearing sunglasses (see Excerpt 24).

When their partner commented on the arrogant nature of this statement, Hänsel reassured their partner that it was others who said this about them and used “crying and laughing” Emoji to illustrate their reaction to this comment.

Excerpt 24

Hänsel [10:20 PM]: Manchmal sagen Leute dass ich wie Leonard Dicaprio aussieh

{Omitted}

Hänsel [10:24 PM]:

nie! andere menschen sagen dass! 152

Emoji helped Hänsel interpret how their character’s personality and perspective would affect their reactions in this scenario. The sunglasses Emoji created a sense of exaggeration and playfulness around this evaluation of their personality and appearance, which in turn evoked a playful, sarcastic response about Hänsel’s arrogance. The second Emoji allowed Hänsel to save face through a visual depiction of laughter while insisting that this comment came from other people.

The extent to which participants engaged in Perspective Taking varied from chat to chat; however, the current analysis did reveal a tendency for participants to interpret the perspective of their characters through their everyday lives in Kassel more often during digital chat than face- to-face interaction. These instances of Perspective Taking involved looking back on their characters’ previous childhood experiences, creating and describing memories associated with these experiences, connecting their lived experiences to the opinions they held towards the texts they read and viewed, and describing their current selves, activities, and relationships as they carry out their day-to-day lives in Kassel. 8 out of 14 participants engaged in at least one instance of Perspective Taking during these two digital interaction activities; that is, over half of the participants identified and acted upon at least one opportunity to reflect on a perspective other than their own and enacted this perspective through multimodal digital interaction.

Discussion

The goal of this detailed analysis of digital interaction data was threefold: 1) to investigate and describe ways in which language learners carry out interaction during experiencing digital chat activities; 2) to explore the potential of multiliteracies-based digital interaction activities to afford interaction; and 3) to demonstrate moments in which learners’ 153 interactional practices and multiliteracies lesson design signal transitions from experiencing to analyzing and conceptualizing. A secondary goal was to compare findings from the analyses of face-to-face and digital interaction in order to shed light on potential affordances for interactional literacies development that each of these contexts provide. It is necessary, then, to discuss the findings of the analysis of digital interaction in relation to the conclusions that were made based on the face-to-face data concerning these three goals. I first synthesize the findings from the analysis of digital interaction data, focusing on what experiencing looked like during digital interaction around texts. I then turn to the face-to-face interaction data to discuss several significant differences in interactional practices involved during experiencing in these two contexts. Finally, I discuss several tendencies of digital interaction activities to facilitate the shift from experiencing to other knowledge processes that were revealed during this study.

Experiencing Texts through Interaction in Digital Spaces

Experiencing within digital spaces and digitally mediated texts has been described by a number of digital literacies and multiliteracies scholars as a process of connecting learner’s personal and educational worlds through “immersion in language use” (Paesani, Allen, &

Dupuy, 2016, p. 257); that is, activities that scaffold their engagement with a text through observing, exploring, and connecting through existing knowledge and experiences (Paesani,

Allen, & Dupuy, 2016; Reinhardt & Thorne, 2011; Reinhardt & Zander, 2011). While interacting synchronously in digital spaces, participants in the current study immersed themselves by expressing, reacting to, and affirming opinions, connecting lived experiences of their character personas to those present in the texts, and negotiating meaning by expanding on the given prompts and talking through uncertainties they felt about the texts. 154

Reliance on Text

These practices of digital interaction were often text-based, even though participants had access to a variety of forms of multimodal expression (e.g., Emoji, gifs, memes, etc.). Instead of illustrating their reactions to one another through these visualization strategies, participants relied on text and punctuation to mark changes in language use that would otherwise be altered through verbal cues (e.g., an ellipsis to indicate a pause or an open-ended thought, capital letters to demonstrate volume or stress on a significant word, etc.). This tendency to convey meaning through text was true for the majority of participants, as most of the 15 instances of Emoji use came from one participant. Hänsel used 11 total Emoji, primarily during the first Google

Hangouts activity. All participants who did choose to use Emoji tended to use them to make visible their reactions while uttering opinions and negotiating meaning.

This uneven spread and general lack of Emoji use suggests that most participants were not necessarily focused on depicting their opinions and reactions visually. It is likely that the participants’ own tendencies in text-based messaging outside of the classroom influenced their decisions to include or leave out Emoji during these activities. Because these interactions took place during a simulation, it is also possible that participants attributed the use or nonuse of

Emoji to the realities of the character persona they inhabited. Hänsel presented themselves in their online profile as a young adult preparing to attend university, for example, which may suggest a playful approach to illustrating their thoughts and reactions with Emoji, and perhaps more exposure to and awareness of this strategy within their community.

Immersion through perspective-taking

It is possible that participants were engaging in forms of perspective taking that, from an etic perspective, were not overtly expressed, or that could not be expressed as easily during 155 digital text-based chat. While perspective taking manifested itself for a select few participants through strategies like referring to experiences in their past or present, it is just as likely that participants were aware of the vocabulary and the topics that their character personas would have implemented during interaction and made subtle changes in their language use to take on this other perspective. In this case, it would be difficult to code the emergence of these moments of perspective taking as a researcher from an etic perspective. Instead, I turned to the post- simulation reflections for which students wrote about the various choices they made that assisted in immersing themselves in their character’s persona. For example, in response to the prompt that asked students to reflect on the choices they made with their language to embody their characters, Königssohn explained:

“I tried to embody prince charming by using formal language and being very respectful to

my peers. This was meant to make me seem like a kind prince” (Königgsohn, Simulation

1 Reflection).

Several participants, even those that did call on the past experiences of their characters, revealed that they actually did not alter their language use in any specific way. Rather, they were made aware of similarities between their identities and the various versions of the characters they researched:

“I didn’t communicate differently than normal. I’d like to say we have a lot of

commonalities. I guess I could’ve talked in a quieter voice or acted more afraid due to the

horrible witch experience” (Hänsel, Simulation 1 Reflection).

Hänsel identified one strategy here that would be difficult to implement during text-based chat. While there are potential ways of representing volume of speech through characters and 156 fonts (i.e., smaller font sizes, italics), these strategies are not universally recognized as signals of volume and could easily be misinterpreted or overlooked by an interactional partner.

Comparing and Contrasting Digital and Face-to-Face Interaction

Participants engaged in similar interactional practices across interactional mediums. They expressed opinions about the texts they had viewed and read, negotiated these opinions with their interaction partners, described and recounted elements of these texts that they found crucial to their discussion, engaged occasionally in perspective taking by articulating various connections between their character persona and the text, and initiated brief moments of interpretation through speculation and synthesis. There were few differences in their language choices between modes. Words like “finden” (to find, think) and “denken” (to think) appeared regularly during instances of Opinion Uttering about textual elements, present and past tense forms of the verb

“sein” (to be) followed by adjectives like “interessant” (interesting), “gut” (good), and “schlecht”

(bad) facilitated many of their descriptions of these elements and their general feelings towards the texts. While negotiating meaning, participants tended to use the same terms to affirm statements they agreed with, such as “genau” (exactly) and “ja” (yes, yah).

One specific similarity worth mentioning in more detail was the general tendency to overlook grammatical and lexical errors during interaction. On the one hand, it was less surprising to observe this phenomenon in the face-to-face interaction data, as the act of repairing oneself can affect the cohesion and flow of conversation and the act of repairing someone else can often result in the initiator to lose face. On the other hand, digital interaction has been found to afford a relatively low-pressure context for L2 output (Kern, 2015; Payne & Ross, 2005;

Sauro & Smith, 2010). Research on various forms of synchronous computer mediated 157 communication (SCMC) suggests that the comparatively low speed of conversation during chat allows for language learners to take advantage of pre-utterance planning to notice and correct for grammatical accuracy. Learners also have the ability to revisit information that was shared earlier during chat sessions which in turn fosters a low-cognitive load; that is, they do not have to rely solely on real-time, spontaneous strategies to maintain a sense of continuity in the interaction (Payne & Ross, 2005).

However, it would seem that error correction in these studies is more likely to occur during the drafting of the message as opposed to after the message had already been sent. In the current study, students typically only corrected an error when they realized that a typo had been made or perhaps used a term that they did not mean to initially use. Many of the utterances from the example chat transcripts featured in this chapter were made one to three minutes, and sometimes even upwards of five minutes after the previous speaker’s utterance, yet, I was only able to code a single instance of repair between these examples. The longer intervals of time between many of the digital utterances in this analysis seem to align more closely with Kern’s

(2015) reasoning on the nature of digital messaging. He states, “Because messages (which are often requests for interaction) arrive instantaneously, at any hour of the day or night, senders cannot assume that receivers are available to communicate … Whereas writing has traditionally been a focal activity, in today’s online communication it is sometimes a peripheral activity” (p.

171). Participants in this study were instructed to hold a 5-minute conversation; however, that is not generally how text messaging and chat conversations work. It is plausible that participants were dividing their attention between other activities and chatting with their classmates, therefore spending less time modifying responses before tapping “Enter”. It is also possible that, because these participants use text messaging and other short forms of written digital 158 communication on a regular basis, they are familiar with the amount of “leeway” that these interactional forms and the technologies that they use to engage in interaction allow (Kern, 2015.

P. 168).

Another similarity between interactional modes can be found in the amount of

Perspective Taking that participants engaged in. The number of instances were comparable, as approximately 10% of all coded language use was marked as some form of Perspective Taking.

However, the depth of these instances seemed to vary between modes. During both of the example Google Hangouts illustrated in this chapter, the participants engaged in Perspective

Taking while talking about what they, as their characters, would or were going to do after concluding the chat. While discussing whether or not they would watch Rotkäppchen again,

Zauberin mentioned that she would watch it with her new roommate in Kassel. She also closed that chat by taking leave to go have dinner, a vegetable soup that she had prepared using produce from her garden. During the second Google Hangouts chat, both Hänsel and their partner talked about continuing their reading of Momo, hoping that the content became more interesting. All of these examples of Perspective Taking occurred during the last interaction activities of Simulation

1 and Simulation 2. Participants extended the simulation context beyond the final activities by referring to the future realities of their characters, even if they did not actually engage in those activities themselves.

Perspective Taking took on a slightly less detailed form during the face-to-face book club activities. Several participants found opportunities to connect the experiences of Momo with their own lives, primarily before they arrived in Kassel. The participant who played Mutter

(mother) of Hänsel and Gretel, for example, once said that they could not read before coming to the book club and now they love to read, playing on the sociohistorical reality that many people 159 were illiterate at the time these stories were to have taken place. Mutter also explained that

Momo’s life was similar to their own but did not elaborate on this statement. In another example,

Königssohn, the prince from Aschenputtel (Cinderella) explained briefly during the Public

Forum activity that immigration is seen as positive in his kingdom, referring here to where he lived before coming to Kassel.

While there were of course exceptions to this tendency to take their characters’ perspective on a surface level, it would seem that the approach to and depth of the Perspective

Taking participants engaged in was partially dependent on the medium of interaction. In the group-based book club context, participants tended to focus on the ways in which they could make meaning by embodying and voicing the literary and historical realities surrounding their characters. The Google Hangouts context appeared to encourage participants to reflect on the modern lives of the characters and how the original stories from which they came could shape their personas in the present-day city of Kassel. Based on these findings, it seems that the mediation that occurred during digital chat allowed students to feel less pressured to present themselves as they may in the classroom setting. That is, students did not see one another during the digital chat sessions which decreased potential anxiety they might feel while taking on the perspective and performing it in front of others in class. Text-based messaging media acted here as a relaxed digital (versus physical) space for experimenting with language and expression.

Digital Interaction as Entry into Other Knowledge Processes

A number of studies investigating the implementation of multiliteracies frameworks for language learning conclude that experiencing activities alone are not sufficient in creating opportunities for learners to analyze language, particularly at the level of making meaning from 160 language forms and their relationship to the texts, authors, speakers, and social contexts that surround them (Allen & Goodspeed, 2018; Michelson & Dupuy, 2014; Paesani & Menke, 2019).

Often in these discussions, though, scholars seem to approach these knowledge processes as individual units that need to be represented within the whole of the lesson or curriculum. While the current project presented the digital interaction activities primarily as experiencing, both the materials design and student participation demonstrated moments during which the lines between knowledge processes were blurred.

The prompts for both digital interaction activities included several questions that were created in order to provide the opportunity for students to move beyond experiencing if they felt prepared to do so. During Google Hangouts #1, there were several questions that referred to students’ presence in the simulated reality of Kassel and asked if they enjoyed the city thus far as well as their time at the first film night (i.e., the simulated event where they were to have watched Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood). To respond to these questions, students engaged in Perspective Taking overtly by expressing the opinions their characters held towards Kassel and the film they saw during the event. Königgsohn, for example, mentioned that he liked the forest in Kassel after Froschkönig inquired about his favorite place in the city. They also went beyond the prompt questions to situate themselves more completely in the simulation. For example, Zauberin explained that she needed to leave to eat the soup she made with vegetables from her garden. It was in these moments that students were able to rely on experiencing as a way to venture into the knowledge process of analyzing. While students implemented evaluative language and expressing opinions during these instances, this familiar kind of language supported students’ exploration of their characters’ perspective while connecting it to their own. 161

There were also several prompt questions that encouraged students to interpret meanings in the texts they encountered. For example, students talked about whether they had found a moral in the film version of Rotkäppchen during Google Hangouts #1 and deliberated on whether or not they found Momo “märchenhaft” (fairytale-esque). In both contexts, students reflected on the knowledge they had brought with them both from before the course began and after engaging with texts about fairy tales. Using this knowledge of genre conventions, they interpreted various figures and occurrences in the texts in order to establish any connections between them and

“typical” features of fairy tales. These questions and the interpretations that students described acted as opportunities for analyzing; that is, students were able to start within the familiar realm of describing characters and plots and move further into analytical learning by interpreting these features in connection with the structures that characterize the fairy tale genre.

Conclusions

While immersed in the knowledge process of experiencing, language learners make meaning through their own lived experiences and the realities within and surrounding texts

(Cope & Kalantzis, 2009, 2015). Because the realities surrounding access to, consumption of, and interaction around texts are increasingly digital, it is appropriate for second language pedagogy to reflect these realities in the tools and materials that language learners use to engage in literacies practices. For the current dissertation project, digital interaction activities were created and implemented into a multiliteracies-oriented fourth-semester, intermediate German course. These activities provided students with opportunities for experiencing texts through an interactional medium (i.e., Google Hangouts chats) that mirrors many others that often play a prominent role in interaction outside the formal learning environment (e.g., text messaging, 162 social media comments, app-based chat, etc.). Conversation Analysis of transcripts from two digital interaction activities revealed numerous interactional practices that worked to organize interaction.

While several of these practices were similar to those found during the analysis of face- to-face interaction activities (i.e., expressing, reacting to, and affirming opinions, negotiating meaning, perspective taking, etc.), the digital medium seemed to facilitate certain practices to a greater extent. Perspective taking, or the shift from one’s own perspective to that of another in order to gain, explore, and become aware of new knowledge (Kearney, 2012), consisted of talking about their immediate surroundings in the simulated fairytale community of Kassel. The introduction of topics often involved rephrasing or completely reworking the prompt questions.

Practices like repair and searching for appropriate language rarely occurred. Surprisingly, students relied primarily on text to engage in these practices; that is, the majority of students did not incorporate Emoji, memes, gifs, or any other type of multimodal representation of meaning.

Instead, students occasionally used punctuation (e.g., … , !, ?, etc.) and written representations of reactions (e.g., lol, hmmm, haha, etc.) to visualize meanings associated with their language use.

The identification of these interactional practices provides second language instructors and multiliteracies scholars with a more complete understanding of how language learners implement and experiment with language in various interactional modes and media. It also paints a clearer picture of what students are actively engaged in while experiencing, analyzing, and conceptualizing texts during multiliteracies-based instruction. The application of this knowledge has the potential to assist language instructors in scaffolding lessons based on the practices that learners are actually implementing to make meaning. This includes the ability to identify moments for expansion from one knowledge process to another. 163

Future research should consider the ways in which digital interaction can facilitate movement between knowledge processes of experiencing and applying. The current project did not identify any explicit examples of this transition. This was most likely due to the nature of the interaction activities; that is, students were talking with one another about texts they had read in similar formats to what has been done in whole-class discussions, which often prioritize moments of analysis and interpretation (Darhower, 2014; Donato & Brooks, 2004; Thoms,

2011). One potential avenue for this kind of research is the implementation and analysis of various interaction-oriented mobile applications, such as Snapchat and Instagram. These tools are based in multimodal meaning making and offer opportunities for second language pedagogy to continue to represent the technologies that now dictate many of the realities surrounding the ways that language learners interact with those around them.

164

CHAPTER 5: IMPLICATIONS FOR PEDAGOGY AND RESEARCH

Introduction

The current dissertation project contributes an increased understanding of the practices that characterize interaction during experiencing activities and demonstrates moments in which interaction facilitates the reflexive nature of knowledge processes (Kalantzis & Cope, 2016).

This final chapter discusses contributions that this dissertation project makes to the field of multiliteracies-based second language curriculum design, implementation, and analysis. It also puts forward suggestions for designing, scaffolding, and researching interactional literacies in digital and physical spaces for language learning. After a brief summary of the findings, I first describe the ways in which this dissertation project demonstrates interactional affordances of experiencing activities, how these affordances can potentially inform the process of scaffolding interactional literacies, and how learners’ interaction can help scaffold other knowledge processes in multiliteracies-based language curricula. Finally, I identify future directions for the field of multiliteracies pedagogy and research. Specifically, I discuss the role of new interactional technologies in the multiliteracies-based curriculum. I suggest additional frameworks for the investigation of L2 interaction and the professional development of language instructors. I discuss possibilities for new approaches to analyzing and synthesizing data collected from multiliteracies-based language learning activities.

Summary of Findings

This dissertation project involved the design, implementation, and analysis of interaction- oriented experiencing activities within a multiliteracies-based simulation. This simulation was implemented in a collegiate-level intermediate German course, and was made up of three, one- 165 week simulations that were distributed across the three units of the course. Experiencing was understood in this context as the process during which learners bring their existing knowledge and experiences into the language learning context and immerse themselves in less familiar forms of text and language, as well as new approaches to L2 interaction (Cope & Kalantzis,

2015; Kalantzis, Cope, Chan, & Dalley-Trim, 2016). Within the three simulation units I designed for this project, experiencing most clearly took the form of four face-to-face group meetings and two digital chat sessions. Students adopted the role of fairytale characters from Jakob and

Wilhelm Grimm’s collections who had recently relocated to the modern German city of Kassel.

After conducting individual research on the ways these characters were represented in literature and media, students engaged in a fairytale book club, a public forum, as well as Google

Hangouts chats related to the texts they encountered in class and online.

Through coding and conversation analysis of the interactions that took place during these experiencing activities, I identified and described key practices that emerged through students’ interactional language use while experiencing the text at hand. These practices help to operationalize the commonly implemented pedagogical act of “discussion” and provide insight on how language learners actually approach activities for which they are instructed to engage in various modes of talk to make meaning. The most frequently enacted interactional practice during both face-to-face and digital interaction was the expression of opinions, which reflected the choice of prompts for these activities. Other practices that called upon experiential knowledge included introducing new topics to the conversation with the given prompts and expansions of the prompts, affirming the opinions of other students that aligned with their own, and negotiating uncertainties and differences in opinion about a text. 166

Moments in which learners signaled movement from experiencing a text to analyzing emerged primarily through the practices of Perspective Taking and Interpretation. Inhabiting the perspective of their characters provided learners with opportunities to analyze critically by

“develop[ing] understandings of how one’s perspective is similar to or different from the perspectives embedded in texts” (Paesani, Allen, & Dupuy, 2015, p. 39). Interpretation involved moments in which learners reasoned with and critiqued the meanings generated from the text; that is, learners expanded upon their evaluative opinions by connecting them to the social context in which the text was situated. Because more learners engaged in Perspective Taking that drew on both the histories as well as the present selves of their characters during chat sessions, it seems that moving between knowledge processes was facilitated more by digital interactional spaces than face-to-face contexts.

Learners engaged in additional practices such as the use of Emoji and punctuation during digital interaction to add visual cues of their reactions and opinions. These practices indicate an understanding of connections between form and meaning and facilitate learners’ ability to maintain the interactional relationship and cohesion (Vandergriff, 2013). Collaborative Word

Search during face-to-face interaction established a shared sense of which vocabulary aligned well with the topics they introduced. These practices demonstrate a shift to conceptualizing, or the process during which learners “mindfully abstract, reflect on, and practice” the language and knowledge that was generated while experiencing texts through interaction (Hall, 2001, p. 52).

All of these experiencing-oriented interactional practices occurred during both face-to- face and digital modes of interaction; however, it seems that the digital space encouraged learners to experiment a bit more freely with the introduction of topics. During face-to-face interaction, students in this study often relied on reading the given prompts aloud and did not 167 tend to alter the questions. There was a greater tendency in the digital chats to paraphrase or even rework the question to fit the flow of the conversation. These differences are in alignment with findings of CMC research that demonstrate higher complexity and a greater variety in approaches to pragmatic language use during synchronous digital chat than in face-to-face interaction (Sykes, 2005), and show one of many instances in which learners shifted briefly from experiencing to other knowledge processes (i.e., here, conceptualizing).

Findings suggest that experiencing-oriented activities that emphasize interaction facilitate a co-constructed experience around text. While prompt questions can guide conversation and focus in on opinion- and knowledge-oriented responses, interaction is ultimately co-scaffolded by learners and often incorporates moments of other knowledge processes. This kind of interaction provides space for deliberation on and experimentation with structures and form (i.e., conceptualizing) while also providing space for reflecting on the experience of engaging with a text and interpreting texts through perspective-taking (i.e., analyzing).

Contributions to Multiliteracies Pedagogy

Scaffolding Interaction with Multiliteracies Pedagogy

The pedagogical design and resulting data from this dissertation project demonstrate how choices in pedagogical design and technology can shape opportunities for interaction in the second language classroom. The implementation of a multiliteracies-based simulation created spaces in which learners could immerse themselves and connect with the course content in new ways while practicing the structures and genres that they had learned thus far in their German instruction. This German course is considered the “Fairy Tale Course” because it features Grimm fairy tales as its main texts. The simulation allowed for these Grimm fairy tales to be represented 168 through the ways in which students designed their character personas and allowed for the incorporation of texts that represented other genres (e.g., modern fiction, news, narratives, etc.) as well. Meaning making was therefore facilitated through activities during which students drew on the lived experiences of their character personas as they designed them and interacted around texts relevant to the simulated social context. The simulation-based interactional spaces also provided learners an alternative face to display during dialogue around the text. Students were able to approach interaction from a perspective that was not their own, thus allowing them some distance from their own opinions and reflections on the texts around which they interacted.

Students acknowledged this through instances of perspective-taking during interaction, which incorporated the knowledge of their characters’ backgrounds and personalities that they developed over the course of the simulations.

Although language pedagogy and literacy education has capitalized on and continues to create knowledge related to the nature of A Pedagogy of Multiliteracies in language learning, some scholars recently introduced criticism into the discussion that questions the flexibility of this framework. Leander and Boldt (2013) critique the scope of multiliteracies as “a domestication that subtracts movement, indeterminacy, and emergent potential from the picture”

(p. 24). In the context of second language learning, this suggests that the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy is rarely considerate of the variability that occurs while learners actually engage in meaning making and the fluidity with which they move between knowledge processes.

Both the theoretical background and the execution of this framework have been viewed as discrete, which creates a tendency for resulting lessons to be overplanned and less based on the literacies practices that are actually unfolding during learning activities and in their everyday realities. 169

In analyzing the interactions that learners carried out during multiliteracies activities, this study worked to understand the things that learners do to know and to engage in informed, reflective, and analytical experimentation with language. This knowledge sheds light on areas in which this perceived rigidity in the multiliteracies framework can be resolved, particularly by creating activities informed by the practices and strategies that learners apply during these activities. To do this, language instructors must acknowledge the inevitability of ambiguity in how their students will enact meaning making during these activities and identify ways to incorporate the results of the potentially nonlinear meaning-making process into the curriculum

(Leander & Boldt, 2013). The practices I identified allowed me to in turn identify potential moments of shift between knowledge processes that can be exploited in the next series of lessons. For example, because students in this study spent time talking about what they (i.e., their characters) were going to do following the digital chat with a peer, it might create opportunities for them to describe and reflect on those activities in a written or video journal. While this approach does require time to review learner artifacts, it demonstrates a learner-centered pedagogical design. This pedagogical analysis can also work to inform changes or expansions on the design for future activities or upcoming semesters and courses.

Future Directions for Research

The findings from this study suggest several key avenues for future research related to the investigation of interactional literacies in second language learning. Future research should consider a variety of research methodologies and analytical frameworks to inform the process of observing interactional practices, the continuously evolving role and development of new technologies in the social practice of literacy outside the formal learning context, and the ways in 170 which the analysis of interaction that takes place during multiliteracies activities can inform research on the creation and implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy.

Considerations for Observing and Analyzing Face-to-Face Interaction

Analyses of classroom discourse and text-oriented discussion have provided a number of useful examples and suggestions for the practice of scaffolding and leading class discussions

(e.g. Darhower, 2014; Donato & Brooks, 2004; Kearney, 2005; Mantero, 2002, 2006;

Seedhouse, 2006; Thoms, 2012). However, less studies have been explicit about the physical and logistic considerations for organizing data collection during classroom discussions. The current study involved students’ regular participation in group meetings during class sessions. Each of these groups consisted of both participants and non-consenting students, which presented several challenges for the accurate and representative analysis and discussion of interactional data.

While it was more common for groups to include one student who did not consent, there were several groups whose data were quite fragmented because they included two or more nonconsenting students. Future iterations of this study and similar research concerning interaction during class-based interactional activities should consider creating groups after consent has been collected and, if possible, grouping research participants together.

Studies in the field of Interactional Sociolinguistics have investigated the role of paralinguistic and nonverbal modes of communication during face-to-face communication.

While the chosen analysis method for the current study, Conversation Analysis, does not typically use video-recorded data, filming students during their face-to-face book club meetings would have allowed for the additional analysis of paralinguistic and gestural interaction that occurred alongside verbal communication, particularly those that helped participants embody the 171 character they chose. Future research on face-to-face interaction, particularly during activities that call on learners to engage in interpretation and perspective taking, should incorporate video- recorded data in order to investigate the role that gesture, facial expression, and space play in how learners experiment with perspective during interaction. Interactional Sociolinguistics approaches language as a “socially and culturally constructed symbol system” (Schiffrin, 1994, p. 98), and prioritizes the organization of experience; that is, how agents structure and make sense of experiences in the social domain. With the ability to view the entirety of students’ interactions, researchers would better be able to comment on the emergence of embodied and multimodal literacies practices in language learning. It would also be beneficial to engage students in reflection on the extent to which they carry out these literacies practices, specifically to find out more about if and how they facilitate learners’ ability to make connections between their personal experiences and those they engage in while experiencing texts.

The Role of Evolving Interactional Technologies

Interaction took the form of face-to-face group conversations and text-based synchronous chat in this project; however, these interactional contexts are not entirely representative of the modes of communication in which learners are engaging on a daily basis. Mobile applications are creating entirely new interactional genres by combining live streaming, video recording, and augmented reality. SnapChat and Instagram, for example, are redefining synchrony through features called “Stories” in which users can record brief messages or videos and upload them throughout a 24-hour period for others to view and respond to when convenient. Through these applications, interaction is evolving into a more performative act in which a speaker's 172 surroundings and actions play a much larger role than in face-to-face or text-based communication.

Research on the development of digital and interactional literacies should consider the significant role that these applications now play in the lived realities of second language learners, and the ways in which they contribute to the practice of multiple literacies in a second language.

These inquiries should adopt a classroom-based or action research design in which pedagogical design, implementation, and analysis are all components of the research process. One such study might implement and analyze daily “Stories” created by learners using one of the previously mentioned applications in order to identify affordances for interpersonal and presentational modes of communication. A second approach might analyze lesson design that incorporates

“Snaps” or “Stories” from these applications as texts and demonstrate how students make meaning from these texts during each knowledge process (i.e., opportunities to experience communication relevant to their personal practices, conceptualize language use in these kinds of digital contexts, analyze the intent behind the “speaker’s” multimodal and linguistic choices, and apply their knowledge by creating an L2 “Snap” or “Story”).

Participants in the current study tended to inhabit the modern lives of their characters more overtly while interacting in digital spaces. Additional research is needed to determine the extent to which digital interaction facilitates perspective taking, and to demonstrate how various digital tools can contribute to this interactional practice. Studies might consider, for example, the analysis of student-produced texts in which they enact what they, or in the case of a simulation, their characters, are talking about while using an app like SnapChat or Instagram (e.g., recording themselves making dinner while they describe what they are cooking) as well as the responses these texts provoke from their peers. It is also likely that learners would reflect on the ways they, 173 or in the case of a simulation, their character, would use the Available Designs provided by these apps such as augmented reality in various situations (e.g., choosing a filter that overlays wolf ears and whiskers on their face to visually inhabit the character). The analysis of learner artifacts would provide insight on how the practice of interactional literacies that often takes place digitally in personal spheres can be scaffolded by and work to inform multiliteracies instruction.

Research on Multiliteracies Pedagogy

Analyses of multiliteracies materials like those conducted by Menke and Paesani (2019) and Rowland et al. (2014) demonstrate the imbalance that currently characterizes some multiliteracies-based second language curricula. The overemphasis on experiencing that was identified in these analyses motivated the current dissertation project to look deeper into the ways in which students carry out activities that highlight the knowledge process of experiencing and how students’ interaction could help identify moments for transition to other knowledge processes. The fields of multiliteracies pedagogy and second language acquisition will continue to benefit from materials analysis; however, there also exists a need for a more complete picture of what is going on during lesson implementation. In order to counteract the argument that multiliteracies-based pedagogy does little to represent the ambiguity and improvisation that accompanies literacies practice (Leander & Boldt, 2013), research on multiliteracies pedagogy needs to move beyond what materials and lesson plans that incorporate interaction look like on the page and explore what they look like in action.

Rather than relying on pre-designed tasks or activities that target specific knowledge processes at different times throughout a lesson, research should identify the practices in which learners engage during these interactions that facilitate moments of transition between 174 knowledge processes. A number of studies that analyze student writing in multiliteracies curricula already adopt this student-driven approach to researching pedagogical implementation

(Allen, 2009; Allen & Goodspeed, 2018; Allen & Paesani, 2019; Paesani, 2016). If multiliteracies-oriented language instruction is going to work towards a more balanced approach to second language learning and teaching, research needs to continue to identify practices within other modes of communication that both characterize and indicate movement beyond each knowledge process.

Conclusions

Within a framework of multiliteracies, second language learners make connections between form and meaning by engaging in activities that emphasize the interpretation and creation of texts (Allen & Paesani, 2019). However, the interpretive, analytical, and transformative scope of this framework has been brought into question because of the demonstrated tendency for pedagogical implementations to overplan learning activities and to oversaturate lessons and curricula with activities that engage learners in experiencing more often than any other knowledge process (Leander & Boldt, 2013; Menke & Paesani, 2019; Rowland et al., 2014). These recent analyses of multiliteracies materials have called for an increased research focus on interpersonal modes of communication to help determine what learners are actually doing to know and to learn during multiliteracies activities.

This dissertation project contributes several findings to this call for research. Through the detailed conversation analysis of student interaction in face-to-face and digital spaces, this study identified a number of interactional practices that characterize interpersonal communication during multiliteracies-based experiencing activities and demonstrated moments in which these 175 practices facilitate weaving between experiencing, conceptualizing, and analyzing. These practices in turn help to illustrate the practice of interactional literacies, which involve an awareness of the ways in which language and multimodal expression can be applied in various social contexts in order to make meaning through talk in digital and face-to-face settings. The implementation of a simulation in which experiencing activities emphasized interacting around texts provided models for scaffolding interaction within a multiliteracies-based second language curriculum, which in turn provides suggestions for choosing technologies and designing learning activities that facilitate this interaction. There is much left to be learned about the ways in which second language learners participate in interaction, both in personal and educational spheres.

Future research should consider the plethora of web- and app-based technologies that continue to change the way interaction is carried out and determine the extent to which these technologies facilitate the practice of interactional literacies. Research on the implementation of multiliteracies pedagogy should explore new avenues for establishing a balanced representation of all knowledge processes within language curricula, with a particular emphasis on how to create and identify moments for movement between knowledge processes.

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APPENDICES

Appendix A: Simulation-Week Lesson Plans, Fall 2018

Simulation 1 (Week 4) Montag Dienstag Mittwoch Donnerstag “Beschreibungen” “Profile” Aufwärmung Aufwärmung • Aufwärmung • Aufwärmung • Brainstorm • Model Profile Filmabend Flyer Reaktionen • Create name • Welcome badges Email / Email DEFA Film Intro Kritikersclub / schreiben “Critics Forum”: Vorstellungen: Aufgeben: • Example Märchen-Meet-and- Aufgeben: • Aufsatz 1 Filmrezension Greet • Read (Profil) Teil 2: • Gruppenarbeit • Characters character Meinungen introduce “Beschreibung (e.g., soziale, Aufgeben: themselves to en” on the politisch, etc.) • Google one another website -- • Watch DEFA Hangout Chat contact 2 Rotkäppchen • Audioaufnah Märchennachbarschaf others me 2 t (“App”) character by • Aufsatz 1, • Introduce commenting Teil 3 neighborhood on their posts “app” (course • Aufsatz 1 Teil wiki) 2 • Aufsatz 1 (Profil)

Aufgeben: • Aufsatz 1 (Profil) Teil 1

Simulation 1 Prep Day (Thursday prior) 1. Aufwärmung: Post-it Spiel (or something that gets them thinking about descriptions / character traits / etc.) 2. Personen Beschreiben: A review of structures / vocabulary used in personal descriptions (pre-task for simulation) a. Students brainstorm information about themselves / another individual in their life (use pages from “Schreiben Lernen” to help with this process) 3. Preparation for Simulation 1 a. Students choose 1 character out of a “hat” -- they are allowed ONE re-draw (be sure that they put their initial pick back in the “hat”) -- this is the character that they will be playing for Simulations 1-3 177

b. Students choose 1 city out of a “hat” -- they are allowed ONE redraw -- this is the city from which this character is from for the simulation c. Introduction: i. Instructor shows the Märchenstraße map and explains the simulation scenario to students: 1. You (your character) have moved from your hometown to the city of Kassel. 2. Because you are new in town, you have joined a neighborhood app called “Märchennachbarschaft” to get to know others in the area. 3. Throughout the next week, you will create a profile on this “app”, communicate with others on the “app”, and engage in activities with your “neighbors” during class time 4. Aufgeben (Homework): a. Research AB: In order to understand your role, you’ll need to do some background research on your character. i. Find the “original” / Grimm Version of the story in which your character appears and read it! ii. Complete the worksheet using this version, as well as other versions you find / know of / have seen / read / etc. iii. Using this information, start to brainstorm how you want to portray yourself as this character.

Simulation 1, Day 1 (Monday) 1. Aufwärmung: (5 minutes): Students fill out a “registration form” for the Neighborhood App as their characters (based on “Personen beschreiben” in “schreiben lernen”) 2. Beschreibungen: (20 minutes) (conceptualizing) a. Brainstorm: wie beschreibt man sich selbst? Welche Informationen sind nützlich /wichtig? i. Make a list / word cloud on the whiteboard based on students’ responses ii. Students should refer to the background research they’ve conducted on their character so far iii. Highlight those words/phrases that fit well into categories: Überblick, Persönlichkeit, Familie / Freunde OR ask students to place these words/phrases into these categories b. Überblick: Students write down brief autobiographical information as their character (name, age, job, etc.) c. Persönlichkeit: Fill out “Was für ein Mensch bin ich?” survey d. Familie / Herkunft: students create a small “Stammbaum” for their character 3. Vorstellungen: (10 minutes) (experiencing) -- F2F Interaction Task 1 a. Students create name badges for their characters to be used throughout simulations (collect at the end of each day if you’d like to prevent them from getting lost / thrown away!) i. Name ii. Hometown iii. Image that best describes them 178

b. Students move around the room to introduce themselves to at least 5 other characters. i. Recycle questions like “wie heißen Sie/ wie heißt du?”, “woher kommen Sie / woher kommst du?”, “wie alt sind Sie / wie alt bist du?” ii. Gain additional knowledge by asking about the image -- “was für ein Bild ist das?”, “warum haben Sie / hast du das ausgewählt?” 4. Märchen-Nachbarschaft: (10 minutes) a. Show an example of a neighborhood app -- ask students if they have one, are familiar with them, what kind of information/interactions occur on these apps b. Project the Wordpress page that will be used throughout the simulations (this is the “neighborhood app”) and walk them through navigating the site -- directions for posting to the blog are given on the Aufsatz Aufgabenstellung c. If there is time, you might allow students to set up their accounts in class. 5. Aufgeben: a. Explain Aufsatz 1: Profil (applying) b. Assign Aufsatz 1, Teil 1: Selbstbeschreibung -- explain that students should post a brief version of this to the website tonight (this is not a final version, just a version that other characters can read in order to get to know the other characters) *Collect name badges at the end of each class so they don’t get lost!

Simulation 1, Day 2 (Tuesday) *Instruct students to pick up their name badges as they come into class

1. Aufwärmung: “Fragebogen” (5-10 minutes) a. Instructor (as a character) asks questions about preferences, freetime activities, etc. and students move to the corner that best describes their character (e.g., “Wo fährst du lieber hin, wenn du Urlaub machst? In den Wald, zum Strand, in die Stadt, oder in die Wüste?) b. Could potentially ask students to remove their name badges (to leave simulation temporarily) and ask why they made certain decisions about what they character prefers / what they based these decisions on 2. Profile (15 minutes) a. Instructor shows an example profile (her character) b. In pairs, students work to critically analyze the profile: i. What kind of language is she using to describe herself? Which terms, structures, etc. seem useful for this? ii. What else has she placed in her profile that assists in describing herself? Images? Memes? Links? Etc.? What do these do / How do these represent this person more than just the textual description? iii. Is this someone you (your character) might get along with? Why or why not? (They should consider the background research they’ve done on their character here) c. Review the notes students have taken about this profile as a class 3. Eine Email (15 -20 minutes) a. Students read the “welcome email” from the instructor (“Frau Bürgermeisterin”) 179

b. Individually, students construct an email in response to the welcome email 4. Aufgeben: a. Students should read through the profiles on the “app” and choose 2 other character whom they would like to get to know. b. Construct and post 2 comments, one on each profile, in which they introduce themselves (or if they met them at the meet-and-greet, remind them that they met) and ask questions that will help them get to know them better (Digital Interaction Task 1) i. Students should respond to these comments by Thursday. c. Aufsatz 1: Profil, Teil 2 -- continue to construct profile (based on model they worked with in class)

Simulation 1, Day 3 (Wednesday) 1. Aufwärmung: (5 minutes) Speed-dating (meet other characters they haven’t met yet? / exchange information) 2. Filmabend Flyer (20 minutes) (Gruppen: Heimatstadt) a. Instructor shows “flyer” for the next neighborhood Filmabend (on the website) b. In small groups students view the flyer: i. What kind of text is this? What is its purpose? ii. What information is given about the event? iii. Why might you want to attend the event? (Review this question together after giving a few minutes for them to view the flyer) iv. Why do you think this film is being shown? v. What do we know about when / where it was made? vi. With whom would they like to attend the event? Why? vii. *Have students change seats in order to sit next to the characters with whom they want to “attend the event”. c. DEFA Film Intro (20 minutes) i. View trailer / first 5-10 minutes of the film ii. Review first impressions 1. How is Rotkäppchen portrayed here? And the other characters? (Could even talk with the students playing characters from this story and ask them how they feel about the portrayal of their characters in the film so far) 3. Aufgeben: (5 minutes) a. Students watch the DEFA Rotkäppchen film at home; take notes on how their character likes / reacts to the film b. Aufsatz 1: Profil, Teil 3 / respond to comments from characters

Simulation 1, Day 4 (Thursday) 1. Aufwärmung (5 minutes): Students fill out a short survey about the “Filmabend” 2. Reaktionen (5-10 minutes) a. Instructor briefly polls students by asking who enjoyed the film / who did not 180

b. Instructor asks students to elaborate on their initial reactions by asking which aspects of the film they liked / disliked i. How do you feel about this version vs. other versions? How is it similar / different? 3. “Kritikersclub” (Filmrezensionen) (30 minutes) a. Students group together -- one person from each Heimatstadt b. Instructor projects an example Filmrezension on the board and gives students several minutes to skim through it; asks several follow-up questions: i. Did this reviewer enjoy the film? How do you know? ii. How do they describe the film? What aspects do they spend more time discussing? iii. Do you agree with the reviewer? Why / why not? c. Each group is given a new Filmrezension and should then: i. Links: https://www.moviepilot.de/movies/rotkaeppchen-3; ii. Read through the review iii. Highlight terms that support the reviewer’s opinion (e.g., terminology that shows he/she liked/disliked the film) d. Students work with their groups to write their own Filmrezension in reaction to the DEFA Film -- one person should post this review to the “app” website (be sure names of all characters are posted with the review) 4. Aufgeben: a. Google Hangout Chat: students read through the reviews online; chat for at least 5 minutes with one “neighbor” about the film / “Filmabend” (Digital Interaction Task 2) (due Monday) b. Audioaufnahme: “Bekenntnisse” (Confessions) -- students record themselves speaking for at least 2 minutes about their opinions of their “neighbors” / time so far in the “neighborhood” (due by next Thursday) c. Aufsatz 1: Profil – rough draft due Friday

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Simulation 2 (Week 9) Montag Dienstag Mittwoch Donnerstag

Aufwärmung: Improv Aufwärmung: Was Aufwärmung: Was Aufwärmung: würdest du tun? findest du besser / Interview - Mein Buchclub Skit: was machst du lieber? Lieblingsbuch (as “Erstes Treffen” Buchclub: 2. Treffen themselves) (Part 1, Buchclub: 3. Treffen Aufgeben: Audioaufnahme 4) (Part 2, Buchclub: 4. (letztes) • Read 1st half Audioaufnahme 4) Treffen (Part 3, of text Aufgeben: Buchrezension Audioaufnahme 4) • Annotate on • Read 2nd half Example 1 Classroom of text Buchrezension Salon • Respond to 1 Aufgeben: Example 2 comment / • Respond to question left comments on Aufgeben: by group Classroom • Aufsatz 2.1 member Salon • Google • Annotate • Read Hangout description of Aufsatz 2.1

Simulation 2: Prep Day (Thursday prior) *Remind students to have a device on which they can access Internet from easily for Thursday and next week. 1. Aufwärmung (5 minutes) 2. Profile (10 minutes) a. Individually: Students should revisit their profiles, read through them again to re- acquaint themselves with how they have portrayed their character. Use the following questions to guide this reading: i. What does your character look like? ii. What kind of personality do they have? iii. Where do they come from? (e.g., From what city? Do they have family? etc.)? What do they like to do? iv. What do they do professionally? v. What else would you like to highlight in your character that you did not highlight in the previous simulation? (e.g., physical attributes, background information, personality traits, languages they speak, accent, etc.) vi. How do you plan to enact these changes next week? (Review this question as a group once students are finished reviewing their profiles.) 3. Mini-WebQuest: Kassel (15 minutes) a. In groups of 4, students should briefly research the city of Kassel. Provide some resources, but they are also free to use their own: i. https://kassel-marketing.de ii. https://www.deutsche-maerchenstrasse.com/de/ 182

b. In the same groups, students should then talk briefly about what their individual characters might enjoy doing in Kassel / like or dislike about the city, etc. 4. Märchenbüchergemeinschaft (10 minutes) a. Introduce the idea of a “book club” by projecting several images of book clubs on the screen; ask students what they see, what seems to be going on, what kind of setting is it, etc. b. Ask students if they have participated in a “book club” before; if some have, ask them to share briefly about their experience (e.g., what kind of books did they read, what did they discuss, did they meet in person / online, etc.) c. Outline scenario for Simulation 2: i. You (your character) have decided to join a book club in order to get to know more of your neighbors in Kassel and become more involved. ii. You will “meet” both online (through digital social reading) and for face- to-face club meetings iii. The book club has chosen “Momo” by Michael Ende as their first book to read together iv. Students assigned a book club (they will be meeting in these groups next week and communicating online via Classroom Salon) -- each book club should be made up of at least one person from each “Heimatstadt” (there can be multiple from a Heimatstadt to assist in making the groups even) 5. Nachrichten & Aufgeben (5 minutes) a. Remind students that as soon as they put on their name tags, they are in character! (Several reflected on the fact that they wanted to speak more as their characters, now is their chance!). This means they should speak / interact as their character, and refer to others by their character’s name b. Read synopsis of text on Classroom Salon c. Write 1 comment as their character that speculates on the kind of book this is / kind of themes they might want to talk about in their meetings / whether or not they will like the book / etc.; Review other comments before coming to class on Monday

Simulation 2, Day 1 (Monday) *Students pick up their name tags at the beginning of class -- this should symbolize switching into their character’s perspective 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): Improv game - as their characters, take turns saying their names and something they like doing in Kassel and standing in a random spot in the room (e.g., “Ich bin Schneewittchen, und ich gehe gern im Park spazieren”); all other characters should move closer to that character if they enjoy the same activity, further away if they do not like it, in between if they are somewhere in the middle. 2. Büchergemeinschaft Skit (30 minutes) a. Scenario: Characters have arrived for their first book club meeting. How does the first meeting play out? What do they do / say to each other before the meeting starts? Who begins the meeting? How do they all introduce themselves (e.g., Name, Heimatstadt, Beruf, Hobbys, etc.)? 183

b. Task: Write a script and design a short skit that shows the first few minutes of their first meeting (2-4 minutes in length) c. Perform skits (be sure to leave at least 10 minutes for performances) d. Collect scripts and scan them 3. Aufgeben (5 minutes) a. Read the first half of the text using Digital Social Reading platform b. (Asynchronous Interaction Task) Annotate text using the comment function: illustrate terms / phrases they know with images, links, definitions, etc.; ask at least 1 question about something they do not fully understand c. Bring device to class tomorrow if possible

Simulation 2, Day 2 (Tuesday) *Students pick up their name tags at the beginning of class -- transition to character 1. Aufwärmung: (5-10 minutes): Was würdest du tun? (linked) 2. Skits (If you were not able to get through all of the skits yesterday, take the first few minutes to do this today) 3. Buchgemeinschaft: 2. Treffen (20 - 30 minutes) -- one student should record discussion on their phones and submit to D2L Assignments Folder for credit as Audioaufnahme 4 a. Students meet in their book clubs b. Students choose one “facilitator” for their book club -- this person will help lead and moderate discussion c. Each student briefly explains / shares the comments / questions they left about the first portion of the text; group members work together to respond to these questions d. Instructor passes out a list of questions / projects questions for each group to respond to in their discussions -- students should spend the last 5-10 minutes of this activity responding to these questions: i. What are your first impressions of the book? How do you like it so far? ii. Which character(s) have been introduced? How do you feel about the character(s) so far? iii. Does the author effectively describe the “world”? How so? iv. What do you think will happen next? e. Whole class: 10-minute recap of what groups have discussed (if time allows) 4. Aufgeben (5 minutes) a. Read the second half of the text; b. Respond to at least one comment / question left by another book club member; c. Annotate text: highlight at least 2 phrases they find particularly important for the plot / character development / etc. and briefly explain why they think so

184

Simulation 2, Day 3 (Wednesday) 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): Was findest du besser? (3-4 slides with two images; students discuss each with a partner and express which they prefer) 2. Büchergemeinschaft: 3. Treffen (20 minutes) -- one student should record discussion on their phones and submit to D2L Assignments Folder for credit as an Audioaufnahme a. Break into book club groups b. Recap / short conversation about what they highlighted / annotated in the Classroom Salon as homework (5 - 10 minutes) c. Brief conversation based on these questions: (5-10 minutes) d. Did the rest of this chapter play out the way you thought it might? What was different / similar to your speculations? e. Were you reminded of other stories / books / films you’ve experienced while reading? In what ways? f. What do you think happens next? 3. Buchrezension (15-20 minutes) a. Pass out / project example review of the book to students: http://www.buchhexe.com/buch/momo (bottom of page) b. Critical analysis of structure / language use / opinion-sharing c. Tabelle (one for each group) d. Mention Aufsatz 2: Buchrezension (3-4 minutes) e. From their character’s perspective, students should write a 250-300 word book review of “Momo”. 4. Aufgeben (5 minutes) a. Respond to at least one comment / question / annotation left by another book club member b. Aufsatz 2.1 (read assignment description)

Simulation 2, Day 4 (Thursday) 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): Mein Lieblingsbuch “Interview” (as themselves) -- wait to pass out nametags 2. Büchergemeinschaft: 4. (letztes) Treffen (15 minutes) -- one student should record discussion on their phones and submit to D2L Assignments Folder for credit as an Audioaufnahme a. Break into book club groups b. Brief conversation based on these questions: i. What is your opinion of this book based on this excerpt? ii. Would you keep reading / finish the book? Why / why not? iii. Which aspects did you find appealing / not as appealing? (e.g., characters, plot, author’s language use / writing, etc.) iv. Would you recommend this book to others? To whom / which age groups? Why? 3. Buchrezension: (15 minutes) a. 2nd example of Buchrezension: https://gymseligenthalblog.com/2016/01/18/buchrezension-zu-momo-von- michael-ende/ b. Critical analysis of language structures / opinion-sharing techniques 185

c. Tabelle (one for each group) 4. Aufgeben: (5 minutes) a. Google Hangout (Synchronous Interaction Task): Students choose one character (someone who wasn’t in their book club) to have a 5-minute Google Hangout with; should share final opinions about the text b. Aufsatz 2: Buchrezension

Simulation 3 (Week 12) Montag Dienstag Mittwoch Donnerstag

Aufwärmung Aufwärmung Aufwärmung Aufwärmung

Erzählung 1: Erzählung 2: “Der Erzählung 3: Ein Forum in Kassel Biografie Kompass” Nachrichten • Audioaufnahme 5 Interview Aufgeben: Aufgeben: • Brainstorm • Brainstorm Aufgeben: Aufgeben: important and take notes • Aufsatz 3: • Turn notes in event in on opinions / Erzählung table into character’s reactions to whole life in more experiences sentences detail -- add of refugees as to table told in the news

Simulation 3 Prep Day (Thursday prior) 1. Was ist eine Erzählung? (10-15 minutes): Critical framing for the topic of the week: Erzählung a. Draw a mind-map on the board and ask students to talk about the following questions with a neighbor: i. How do you define an “Erzählung”? ii. What fits in this genre? What kind of “Erzählungen” have you experienced? iii. What topics / themes have you seen in “Erzählungen”? iv. What kind of language is used in an “Erzählung”? Are there “typical” tenses / moods / kinds of words / etc.? b. Ask students to come forward and write down the terms / definitions / examples they have come up with in the mand-map c. Take a few minutes to review what students have written, and summarize a few main patterns / themes that have come out of the mind-map 2. Introduce Simulation 3 (10 minutes) a. Provide a quick overview of the context for next week’s simulation i. Students will participate in class as their characters one last time ii. Next week will be focused on the idea of the “Erzählung”; students will see and critically analyze examples of different kinds of “Erzählungen” 186

iii. Aufsatz 3: Erzählung iv. Public Forum in Kassel (a public event where characters will talk about issues facing the city) 3. Aufgeben (5 minutes): a. To prepare for next week, students should take a look back at their profiles, Audioaufnahmen, and book reviews to gather information about their characters and formulate a more detailed background b. Students should fill in the empty table (from Schreiben Lernen) with information about their characters (as notes, not as full sentences) (This will act as a pre-task for eventually writing a biography / “Erzählung” of / about their characters)

Simulation 3, Day 1 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): practice using Präteritum in order to describe an event that occurred recently / give students an image and ask them to narrate what happened using Präteritum -- put useful verbs on the board 2. Erzählung 1: Biografie (20 minutes): a. Show students an example of a short biography (can use the example on page 14 of Schreiben Lernen) b. Students work in pairs to fill in the table (on same page) with appropriate information c. Direct students’ attention to structures commonly used in this genre (e.g., Präteritum, conjunctions / subordinating clauses) -- Use first column of the table for this, so they can compare it to other types of Erzählungen that we look at this week d. Transition: how might an author get all of this information? (An interview!) 3. Interview (15 minutes) a. Characters conduct an interview with a neighbor. (Questions from 1C: Biografie in Schreiben Lernen) i. Wo und wann bist du geboren? ii. Wie war deine Kindheit im Großen und Ganzen? iii. Wo hat deine Familie gewohnt? Ist sie irgendwo umgezogen? Warum? iv. Was sind wichtige Daten in deinem Leben und warum? v. Welche wichtigen Erlebnisse hast du schon gehabt? vi. Was sind die bemerkenswerten Leistungen deines Lebens? Worauf bist du stolz? 4. Aufgeben (5 minutes): a. Using their tables, students should turn the notes into whole sentences (Don’t worry about connecting sentences into fluid paragraphs at this point -- just turn the content into sentences)

Simulation 3, Day 2 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): Characters describe a “wichtiges Erlebnis” in their life (in Perfekt this time) 2. Erzählung 2: “Der Kompass” by Zafer Senocak (30 minutes) 187

a. Before reading the text, ask a few students (as their characters) to share their “wichtiges Erlebnis” b. Come together as a class and ask characters: i. what kind of events they focused on -- events in their childhood? Adult life? Experiences of moving? Education? Etc. ii. Are there any specific belongings they have that they associate with this event / experience? Why? iii. Pass out the text and project a few questions to guide their reading on the board: iv. Why does the narrator’s father carry a compass? v. According to the narrator: 1. What can one do with a compass? 2. What happens to someone without a compass? 3. How does the narrator’s viewpoint about the compass change from childhood to adulthood? 4. What kind of experiences is the narrator describing? c. In small groups: students read the text and respond to these questions d. As a class: i. review students’ responses to the questions (call on each group to provide an response) ii. Analyze the structure / language use in the text (feel free to give them 5 minutes in their groups to look for examples first): -- use 2nd column of the table to help with this 1. Does the narrator switch tenses at any point? Where? Why -- what effect does this have? 2. When / Why does the narrator include dialogue? What effect does this have? (i.e., why wouldn’t he just narrate the whole thing?) 3. What kind of conventions does he use? (e.g., connectors, subordinating / coordinating clauses, adverbs, etc.?) 3. Aufgeben (5 minutes): a. Using the information in their tables, students should expand on a specific event in their character’s backstory -- add this to the “Sätze” part of their table (5-8 sentences; do not have to connect)

Simulation 3, Day 3 1. Aufwärmung (5-10 minutes): Another practice Erzählung -- project images on board for students to narrate using Präteritum 2. Erzählung 3: Denkmal (35 minutes) a. Short brainstorm: Was ist ein Denkmal? Was ist das Ziel eines Denkmals? Beispiele? b. “Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument” i. Show a few images of the monument (i.e., that show where it is, what it looks like, the saying on it in 4 different languages) (5 minutes) ii. Ask students what the saying means / where they have seen or heard it before; why is it on a monument? 188

iii. Interview with Olu Oguibe in English (artist and refugee): https://vimeo.com/232319295 (10 minutes) iv. Questions to consider while watching: 1. Von wem wurde das Denkmal entworfen (created)? 2. Wie beschreibt der Künstler die Bedeutung des Denkmals? 3. Für wen ist das Denkmal? Was will Kassel damit zeigen? v. Watch portion of interview (beginning - 04:53) vi. Briefly review what the monument is for, who built it, for what reason, etc. vii. Short reading about monument (mostly informational): (10 minutes) 1. https://www.documenta14.de/en/venues/21722/konigsplatz (English) 2. https://www.documenta14.de/de/venues/21722/koenigsplatz (Deutsch) 3. Worauf bezieht sich Olu Oguibes Arbeit in Kassel (refer to)? 4. Was war der Biafrakrieg? Was hat das mit seinen Kindheitserinnerungen zu tun? 5. Was ist der Königsplatz und warum ist er wichtig? 6. Wogegen kämpft Oguibe mit seiner Kunst? viii. Ask students to take out the comparison table and fill out the last column - - what is this monument “about”? What language / techniques does the artist use? What might they use in an “Erzählung” about their character? (10 minutes) 3. Aufgeben: (5 minutes) a. Brainstorm how your character would have reacted to the building of the monument in Königsplatz. What opinions does he/she have? Take notes (don’t write a script!) on these opinions and bring with to class tomorrow. i. Wie finden Sie das Denkmal? ii. Inwiefern stimmen Sie mit der Meinung des Künstlers überein? iii. Sollte es stehen bleiben?

Simulation 3, Day 4 1. Aufwärmung (10 minutes): Meinungen zum Denkmal - Ask students several opinion questions about the monument and ask them to move around the room depending on if they agree / disagree / what their opinion is. (e.g., Sollte das Denkmal umgezogen werden?) 2. Ein Forum in Kassel (35 minutes) a. Explain scenario for Audioaufnahme 5 b. Explain that this monument has been a topic of debate since it went up in Kassel i. Nachricht: https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/streit-um-documenta- kunstwerk-ein-obelisk-sucht-ein- zuhause.886.de.html?dram:article_id=414917 ii. „Dass es ein Symbol für Flüchtlinge ist und dass die willkommen sind, das finde ich super. Ich finde den einfach nicht so schön.“ iii. „Stört ja eigentlich nicht, deswegen könnte man den ja auch einfach kaufen.“ 189

iv. „Ja, also ich würde auch sagen, der kann stehen bleiben.“ v. „Wenn eine Skulptur oder so etwas stehen würde, irgendwas Tolles. Aber das, ich weiß nicht, was das – nee.“ vi. etc. c. Break students into groups of 4-5 (try to represent different hometowns as much as possible in each group) d. Give students 10 to 15 minutes to review the notes they took as homework and think about the scenarios they read about in the news articles yesterday e. Students choose a forum moderator who will keep discussion going, ask questions, etc. f. Goal of forum: to come up with solutions for current housing situation and to promote diversity / interculturality g. Audioaufnahme 5: Forum in Kassel i. Students record a 5-10 minute discussion based on their opinions of the news / experiences of refugees in Kassel 3. Aufgeben (5 minutes): a. Aufsatz 3: kreative Erzählung i. Explain that students have brainstormed several main points of their character’s backstory this week (e.g., biographical information, important events, opinions) ii. Introduce Aufsatz 3 topic / instructions

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Appendix B: Face-to-Face Interaction Assignment Descriptions

Simulation 2: Fairytale Book Clubs

Audioaufnahme 4 Märchenbuchclub

Diese Woche nehmen Sie an einer Buchgemeinschaft in Kassel teil, damit Sie gemeinsam mit anderen Märchenfiguren lesen und besprechen können.

Während jedes Treffens (each meeting) sollte eine Person aus jeder Gruppe die Diskussion aufnehmen (record).

Für jedes Treffen… • Sagen Sie am Anfang der Aufnahme Ihren Name (name of your character!) • Diskutieren Sie die Fragen, die Ihre Dozentin (instructor) Ihnen gibt und weitere Fragen / Themen, die Sie alle nützlich während des Lesens finden. • Laden Sie (oder die Person, die aufnimmt) die Aufnahmen in der D2L-Assignments Folder hoch (Be sure all group member names are written on each submission).

Termin: Donnerstag, der 21. März (11:59 Uhr abends) -- *There should be 3 recordings total.

Nützliche Ausdrücke (um Meinung zu äußern):

In my opinion, … Meiner Meinung nach ... I am of the opinion that … Ich bin der Meinung, dass ... My personal view is that … Meine Meinung dazu ist, dass ... As I see it, ... / So wie ich das sehe, ... From my point of view ... I must admit that … Ich muss zugeben, dass ... I cannot deny that … Ich kann nicht leugnen, dass ... I can imagine that … Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass ... I think/believe/suppose … Ich denke/glaube/nehme an ... Personally, I think … Ich persönlich denke ... That is why I think … Deshalb denke ich ... I am of mixed opinions Darüber bin ich geteilter Meinung ... (about / on) … I am of mixed opinions Ich habe eine geteilte Meinung dazu, weil... about /on this.

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Simulation 3: Public Forum

Audioaufnahme 5 Ein Forum in Kassel

Gestern haben Sie über “Das Fremdlinge und Flüchtlinge Monument” gelesen und gehört -- ein Denkmal, das im Zentrum der Stadt steht und die Erfahrungen der Flüchtlinge erzählt. Die Regierung möchte, dass das Monument an einem neuen Standort aufgestellt wird (moved to a new location). Sie haben sich entschieden, an ein Forum teilzunehmen, damit Sie Ihre Meinung dazu äußern können.

Das Ziel des Forums ist, Meinungen zum Denkmal zu äußern.

Für das Forum… • Wählen Sie ein/e Moderator/in, der/die das Forum leitet (und aufnimmt [record]) • Sagen Sie am Anfang der Aufnahme Ihren Namen (name of your character!) • Diskutieren Sie diese Fragen und weitere Fragen / Themen, die Sie alle nützlich finden. o Was ist Ihre Meinung zum Denkmal? Warum? o Wie haben Sie darauf reagiert, als das Denkmal aufgebaut wurde? o Hatten Sie irgendwelche Lebenserfahrungen, die zu dieser Situation passen? o Sollte das Denkmal an einen anderen Ort verlegt werden (be moved)? Warum (nicht)? o Wie können wir das Leben der Flüchtlinge in Kassel verbessern? • Laden Sie (oder die Person, die aufnimmt) die Aufnahme in der D2L-Assignments Folder hoch (Be sure all group member names are written on each submission).

Termin: Donnerstag, der 08. November

Nützliche Ausdrücke (um Meinung zu äußern): In my opinion, … Meiner Meinung nach ... I am of the opinion that … Ich bin der Meinung, dass ... My personal view is that … Meine Meinung dazu ist, dass ... As I see it, ... / So wie ich das sehe, ... From my point of view ... I must admit that … Ich muss zugeben, dass ... I cannot deny that … Ich kann nicht leugnen, dass ... I can imagine that … Ich kann mir vorstellen, dass ... I think/believe/suppose … Ich denke/glaube/nehme an ... Personally, I think … Ich persönlich denke ... That is why I think … Deshalb denke ich ... I am of mixed opinions Darüber bin ich geteilter Meinung ... (about / on) … I am of mixed opinions Ich habe eine geteilte Meinung dazu, weil... about / on this.

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Appendix C: Digital Interaction Assignment Descriptions

Simulation 1: Google Hangout #1

Märchennachbarschaft Kassel: Google Hangout (als Ihr Charakter!!)

Heute haben wir kurze Filmrezensionen zum DEFA Film (Rotkäppchen) geschrieben. Jetzt sollen Sie mit einem Nachbar ein kurzes Online-Gespräch haben, damit Sie Ihre Reaktionen und Meinungen zum Film besprechen können. Dafür nutzen wir Google Hangouts (*if you are not familiar with Hangouts, please click this link to see a “How To” guide”).

1. Wählen Sie einen Nachbarn aus, mit dem Sie noch weiter sprechen möchten (You might consider a neighbor who you’ve been in contact with via the “Märchennachbarschaftsapp”, during our discussions in class, or a neighbor you haven’t had a chance to get to know). 2. Vereinbaren Sie (to set up) eine Zeit, in der Sie per Google Hangouts chatten können. 3. Reflektieren Sie (to reflect upon) während des Online-Gesprächs die folgenden Fragen / Aspekte: a. Wie beginnt man ein Online-Gespräch? b. Gefällt Ihnen Kassel? Warum (nicht)? c. Welche Aspekte des Filmes fanden Sie interessant? seltsam? lustig? etc. Wieso? d. Gab es in dieser Version eine Moral? Welche? e. Welche weitere Meinungen haben Sie zum Film / zu den Themen im Film? f. Haben Sie den ersten Filmabend in Kassel genossen? Warum (nicht)? g. Stimmen Sie und Ihr Gesprächspartner zu? h. Wie endet man ein Online-Gespräch? i. Etc. 4. Speichern Sie (to save [a file]) Ihr Chat-Transkript als PDF (see directions for how to do this in the “How To” guide linked above) und laden Sie es in dem D2L-Assignments Folder hoch!

Ihr Online-Gespräch sollte mindestens 5 Minuten dauern, aber länger wäre schön! (Don’t forget, we don’t always stick to text during online chat conversations! Feel free to use images, memes, emojis, etc. as you see fit!)

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Simulation 2: Google Hangout #2

Märchennachbarschaft Kassel: Buchclub Google Hangout (als Ihr Charakter!!)

Diese Woche haben wir den ersten Kapitel von “Momo” von Michael Ende kurz besprochen. Jetzt sollen Sie mit einem Nachbar ein kurzes Online-Gespräch haben, damit Sie Ihre Reaktionen und Meinungen zum Kapitel / Buch besprechen können. Dafür nutzen wir Google Hangouts (*please click this link to see a “How To” guide”).

1. Wählen Sie einen Nachbarn aus, mit dem Sie noch weiter sprechen möchten (Choose a neighbor who was not in your book club). 2. Vereinbaren Sie (to set up) eine Zeit, in der Sie per Google Hangouts chatten können. 3. Reflektieren Sie (to reflect upon) während des Online-Gesprächs die folgenden Fragen / Aspekte: a. Wie beginnt man ein Online-Gespräch? b. Hat Ihnen der Kapitel / das Buch gefallen? Warum (nicht)? c. Welche Aspekte des Buches fanden Sie interessant? seltsam? lustig? etc. Wieso? d. Fanden Sie die Geschichte märchenhaft? Inwiefern (to what extent)? Wieso? e. Welche weitere Meinungen haben Sie zum Buch / zu den bisherigen Themen im Buch? f. Haben Sie die Gespräche in Ihrem Buchclub genossen (enjoyed)? Warum (nicht)? g. Stimmen Sie und Ihr Gesprächspartner zu? h. Wie endet man ein Online-Gespräch? i. Etc. 4. Speichern Sie (to save [a file]) Ihr Chat-Transkript als PDF (see directions for how to do this in the “How To” guide linked above) und laden Sie es in dem D2L-Assignments Folder hoch!

Ihr Online-Gespräch sollte mindestens 10 Minuten dauern, aber länger wäre schön! (Don’t forget, we don’t always stick to text during online conversations! Feel free to use images, memes, emojis, etc. as you see fit!)

194

Appendix D: Post-Simulation Reflection Prompts

Simulation 1

In-Class Schreibaufgabe: Simulation 1 -- Märchennachbarschaft Kassel

Letzte Woche haben Sie eine Märchenfigur verkörpert. Jetzt sollen Sie kurz darauf reflektieren. Überlegen Sie und beantworten Sie die folgenden Fragen. Schreiben Sie mindestens 3 Sätze pro Frage. Sie dürfen auf Deutsch und auf Englisch schreiben.

1. Welchen Charakter haben Sie ausgewählt? Wie haben Sie zunächst darauf reagiert? (How did you initially react?) 2. Wie haben Sie diesen Charakter recherchiert? (z.B. welche Webseiten waren nützlich?, Wie beschreiben Sie den Forschungsprozess [research process], etc.) 3. Welche Informationen fanden Sie wichtig, um diesen Charakter richtig zu verkörpern? 4. Wie haben Sie während der Aktivitäten (im Unterricht und Hausaufgaben) den Charakter verkörpern? (z.B. Akzent, Sprache, Meinungen, Körpersprache, Gefühle, etc.) (How did you embody this character during in-class and homework activities? [e.g., with accent, language, opinions, body language/mannerisms, emotions, etc.?]) 5. Glauben Sie, dass Sie als Charakter anders kommuniziert haben als Sie es sonst im Unterricht machen (z.B.: mehr/weniger, andere Sprache benutzt, mit anderen Kommilitonen kommuniziert etc.)? Do you think you communicated differently as the character than you normally do/would in class (e.g. spoke more/less, used different language, communicated with different people etc.)? 6. Welche Ziele (goals) haben Sie für die nächste Simulation (d.h. Wie entwickeln Sie Ihren Charakter während der nächsten Simulation weiter?) (What goals do you have for the next simulation? How will you develop your character further next time?)

Simulation 2 In-Class Schreibaufgabe: Simulation 2 – Märchenbuchclub

Letzte Woche haben Sie Ihren Märchencharakter wieder verkörpert und in einem Buchclub teilgenommen. Jetzt sollen Sie kurz darauf reflektieren. Schreiben Sie mindestens 3 Sätze pro Frage. Sie dürfen auf Deutsch und auf Englisch schreiben.

1. Wie fanden Sie die Skit-Aufgabe am Anfang der Woche? Beschreiben Sie Ihre Erfahrung (experience). Glauben Sie, dass Sie als Charakter anders kommuniziert haben als Sie es sonst im Unterricht machen (z.B.: mehr/weniger, andere Sprache benutzt, mit anderen Kommilitonen kommuniziert etc.)? Do you think, you communicated differently as the character than you normally do/would in class (e.g. more/less, used different language, communicated with different people etc.)? 2. Wie fanden Sie die In-Class-Audioaufnahmen? Beschreiben Sie Ihre Erfahrung (experience). Glauben Sie, dass Sie als Charakter anders kommuniziert haben als Sie es sonst im Unterricht machen (z.B.: mehr/weniger, andere Sprache benutzt, mit anderen 195

Kommilitonen kommuniziert etc.)? Do you think, you communicated differently as the character than you normally do/would in class (e.g. more/less, used different language, communicated with different people etc.)? 3. Welche Lernziele (learning goals) haben Sie für die nächste Simulation?

Simulation 3

In-Class Schreibaufgabe: Simulation 3 – Erzählungen

Letzte Woche haben Sie Ihren Märchencharakter wieder verkörpert und in einem Forum teilgenommen. Jetzt sollen Sie kurz darauf reflektieren. Schreiben Sie mindestens 3 Sätze pro Frage. Sie dürfen auf Deutsch und auf Englisch schreiben.

1. Wie fanden Sie die In-Class-Audioaufnahme (das Forum in Kassel)? Beschreiben Sie Ihre Erfahrung (experience). Glauben Sie, dass Sie als Charakter anders kommuniziert haben als Sie es sonst im Unterricht machen (z.B.: mehr/weniger, andere Sprache benutzt, mit anderen Kommilitonen kommuniziert etc.)? Do you think, you communicated differently as the character than you normally do/would in class (e.g. more/less, used different language, communicated with different people etc.)? 2. Denken Sie, dass diese Simulationen (1, 2 & 3) Ihnen mit dem Sprechen (speaking) geholfen haben? Wieso / Inwiefern? 3. In den letzten In-Class Schreibaufgaben haben Sie Lernziele gesetzt, die Sie für Simulation 2 und 3 erreichen mochten. Ihrer Meinung nach, haben Sie die Lernziele (learning goals) erreicht, die Sie für die Simulationen gesetzt (set) haben?

196

Appendix E: Conversation Analysis Transcription Conventions

Adapted from Seedhouse (2006)

= turn continues at the next “=” symbol [ point at which overlap or interjection occurs ] point at which overlap or interjection ends … indicates a pause of at least 3 seconds {text} a) indicates a sound made by the speaker (e.g., laughter) b) indicates segment from nonparticipant that was omitted (text) a) indicates overlapping talk by a majority of the speakers involved in the conversation b) indicates a stretch of unintelligible speech . indicates final intonation ? indicates inquisitive (i.e., rising) intonation

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