Conversations Basic 9

Conversation Analysis

Each conversation is accompanied by an analysis to give a quick evaluative summation of the students’ performance along with a recommendation of how the students could do better. Various patterns of fluency and dysfluency might be cited if the issue is relevant to the video / transcript.


 

 

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BASIC LEVEL

Session 9

Yuika and Shunichiro

Yuika and Shunichiro

This engaging discussion between Shunichiro and Yuika shows the problem of minimal responses: while Shunichiro has a MLR of 10.0, Yuika’s is only 4.0. But in looking over the transcript, one can see that it is rare for both participants to express more than one sentence….

Yuika and Koki

Yuika and Koki

This discussion between Koki and Yuika is a rather interesting case of how minimal responses function in a discourse. Because of her few and short responses, Yuika’s MLRs are an average 7.1 and her speaking rate…

Koki and Yumi

Koki and Yumi

This discussion between Koki and Yumi shows a relatively high speaking rate (95.0) for Yumi and (107.7) for Koki. Acoustic dysfluency is a bit high, with 51.5 seconds of total silence, or 8.6% silence. Lexical dysfluency is low, as is syntactic dysfluency though Koki’s repetition is a bit high…

Shunichiro and Yumi

Shunichiro and Yumi

This discussion between Shunichiro and Yumi represents a more balanced discussion in which both participants contribute almost an equal amount of information although, again, the females provide fewer number of words than the males: with 177 words from Yumi to Shunichiro’s 285. The speaking rate for both participants is almost the same and is fairly average for this level of proficiency 86.3/88.8; acoustic dysfluency is rather high, 14.7%% silence with Shunichiro having 49.3 seconds of silence compared to Yumi’s 19, though cross-talk pausing is minimal. Lexical dysfluency is only notable due to the use of L1 and to some mispronounced word on the part of Shunichiro. Syntactic dsyfluency is a bit high insofar that MLRs are short with there being lots of repetition and meaningless syllables on the part of Shunichiro. As with the other transcripts, minimal responses are too common and both participants could make the interaction far more interesting by providing more insights, stories, opinions, and examples.

Yumi and Yuika

Yumi and Yuika

This discussion between Yumi and Yuika shows another relatively unbalanced discussion between females. Yumi is producing three times the number of words to Yuika, (238 words to 88) furthermore, Yuika has far too many minimal responses. Yuika’s MLRs, are only 4.2 syllables compared to Yumi’s 13.2. The speaking rates for both girls are very low: 54.3 for Yumi, with a dismal 37.7 for Yuika; however, the amount of silence is low, 5.0% or 17.8 seconds. While Yumi has higher production, she also has a higher rate of meaningless syllables (22 compared to Yuika’s 3). The interchange is the shortest of the corpora due to time considerations for this particular session, but it does give an adequate picture of how same-sex discussions can be more dysfluent than gendered ones, but this, of course, is case-by-case.

Shunichiro and Koki

Shunichiro and Koki

This discussion between Shunichiro and Koki shows a fairly typical interaction for participants at this level. Acoustic, lexical and syntactical dysfluency are quite low and the MLRs are almost native level. In fact, there are few minimal responses; in addition, the amount of silence is also low, 5.0% or 38.5 seconds, with no cross-talk pausing. The speaking rate is average for Shunichiro and a bit higher for Koki, and while Shunichiro does have a bit too much repetition there is no retracing on his part. Shuniricho has a higher number of words compared to Koki, 610 to 434. In short, this reflects a fairly high level of fluency for participants at this level of proficiency.

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