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Chat behavior
Students will encounter several kinds of online chat
environments in their futures, and it's hard to predict what their future will look like
in terms of what they will use more often, and what they will need. Will
they need to function in group chats? In one-on-one personal chats with
bosses and/or clients? Using semi-formal English or less formal? Or even
formal English, or bilingual? My inclination is to say all of the
above. As the world turns more to writing as an informal conversational
medium, all we can be sure of is that we can't be sure what will happen,
but we can be sure writing will be more important. We can only
imagine, based on what we now know, that the most difficult aspects of
their experience in general will probably be responding to chatstream dialogues with any kind of
timeliness, and remembering basic politeness requirements.
What politeness requirements? One might be inclined to ask this
question, given the relative newness of chatting as a medium, and the
general lack of politeness that has been observed by traditionalists who
favor the slower, gentler media, and who criticize the new ones for
their youthful insolence (1). Students will be the first to point out
that one the hardest things about chat as a medium is coming and going,
saying goodbye, etc.; while one instinctively knows that some politeness
is required in a formal situation, particularly with one's teacher, the
lack of any visual cues to make up for language weakness makes this
aspect of chat very uncomfortable for non-native speakers (2). Upon
learning this, and noticing that they did appear to be rather abrupt in
our class conversations, I began requiring saying hello and saying
goodbye, among other things, just as a way of ensuring that students
remembered to at least practice these skills (3).
Immediately we noticed that group chats had, as one of their distinguishing features,
the characteristic of holding several threads at once; it often confused
people who assumed that a comment was for them, when in fact that comment was
meant as a response to an earlier thread. People who, by nature, need a
minute or two to respond to a comment, might find their own message
misinterpreted as a response to a more recent one; thus, the challenge for them is
really developing faster and more accurate reflexes to deal with the
chatstream that could carry any number of ongoing dialogues. Better to
work on this skill now, while the price is low, and the teacher is
forgiving; later on, fatal flaws can be made, with the victim never even
aware that they had happened. I myself noticed that, going back over transcripts,
I had occasionally missed a question or a remark made by a student, due to being
preoccupied with another thread. In oral discourse, i.e. the classroom, I am
used to this, and can go back and answer the original question later, by holding
it in reserve while I deal with the other thread. In chat, it's a little trickier.
In practice people often deal with this by just putting the name of the person
they are speaking to, with colons, at the front of their message. This is the
oral equivalent of looking at someone to show that this particular comment is
intended as a response to something they had said. This use of handle (or chat-
name, or whatever one uses) is something chat has evolved naturally to help
its users sort out these situations.
Emoticons appeared instantly and
naturally, and the big ones (smile, frown, etc.) were, in general,
mutually understood, though I was never sure that all of them
were mutually understood (see below) every time. I in fact did not understand some
of the first few I encountered, and was never quite sure I understood
all of the ones I encountered; I imagined that a small survey
meant to find out how universal certain chat terms in fact are,
would be more than useful (4), but haven't actually carried out the
project. A chat therefore involves a large number of symbols, including
routine English words, that one or a few conversants may have trouble
interpreting; one of their first challenges, then, is to learn how to
successfully clarify what they have tried to understand. We see here
what students find difficult about routine English conversations in the
oral realm; I would be happy if these same high-level students could
successfully clarify what they had heard in oral classroom discourse. We
have successfully taught, in various high-level oral settings, the
skills of clarifying, asking to repeat, hesitating while holding the
floor, etc. (5); there's no reason we couldn't teach the same, in the
writing medium. From the students' point of view, the assignment
therefore contained many new and dazzling requirements, first of which
was keeping attention focused on a chatstream while simultaneously
dealing with new symbols, unfamiliar words, and any number of unusual
discourse laws. The rules of English discourse would be assumed to apply
to a chatspace that is serving as an ESL classroom, but not all of these
discourse conventions are, even in the oral world, mutually understood
(6).
So the student has a number of politeness requirements to remember:
say hello and goodbye; learn how to communicate when you don't
understand something; be careful how you address the teacher (and your
friends); remember that it's a classroom, in spite of the fact that most
or all of your chat experience may involve less formal situations.
Finally, tell people what you're doing: when you're leaving, when you've
turned your back on the computer, etc. Use emoticons only when you're
sure everyone understands them.
There's the rub: in a truly
international environment, how many of the emoticons are truly
universal? If I can't answer this question clearly, surely I can't
expect students to know, yet I always challenge them: if everyone
understands it, go ahead. Prove that everyone understands it! I
challenge them freely and in the genuine spirit of curiosity. Everyone
recognizes a wink, most people recognize the emoticon wink; most in the
American culture are familiar with the social uses of a wink in a live
conversation; many would recognize the similar uses of a chat-wink; but
are these universal? Similar in all cultures? How about the tongue
sticking out?
The new environment has many appealing shortcuts, some of
them automatically generated by students who have logged many hours of
one kind of chat or another. The transcripts, I believe, will be golden
cultural artifacts, at some point, when researchers try to piece
together what happened in the first chats, among people of truly
different backgrounds, as they tried to negotiate meanings and
intentions in environments where those are so easily obscured. It has
also been pointed out that the chat setting is much more intimate than
more formal oral classroom settings; that people tend to share more,
impulsively, in chats, than they would otherwise. I have found this to
be true, but can't speculate as to exactly why. I, as teacher, should model
controlling my impulses and saying only what will encourage learning,
etc. Yet I find myself, along with them, sharing much more of myself, almost
impulsively, due to the environment. I enjoy
knowing people better; I put more of myself on the line, and learn more
about them in the process. Yet, in the process of chatting, I have
learned more than I really need, and in some cases have learned too
much, I've learned things I really would rather not have learned (6).
My students have pointed out the value of learning to "think before you
speak," as if to say that this was something they had to learn as part
of participating in the new media, but I beat them to it; I tried to learn
it myself; then, I
mentioned it in class as part of the assignment. Then, I assumed it
was as difficult for them to learn it as it was for me, I gave them
a wide berth and an easy manner, said it was hard for all of us, and
forgave them easily, as I would in an intermediate conversation class,
when a student would say too much, or say it in the wrong way. Cultural
conflict, after all, will be present in virtually every exchange, no
matter what the medium, in international settings; this, like the medium
itself, is something to be gotten used to, the sooner the better.
I should mention a couple of other kinds of rudeness that I had not
quite predicted when I undertook the venture. Not being prepared for the
intimacy and freewheeling nature of the medium, I wasn't prepared when students
said things to each other that struck me as insulting. They, it seemed,
were far more used to this than I was, and thus felt they could do as they
wished in this situation; I had to remind them that this was a class, and that
my expectation was that they would behave as if we were talking, with polite
tone and manner. It has been said that chat seems to add a sarcasm or bite to
messages that weren't intended that way; it could be that, in the absence of
visual cues, we read into them things that aren't put there. In any case,
people take offense easily in the chat medium; they have to get used to finding
out and clarifying what was originally intended, and apologizing when necessary.
Another problem revolved around the "handle". Generally students used things that
were already familiar to me, as their e-mail address, blog url, or nickname.
Occasionally they used things that weren't familiar to me; once a student logged
in as another student. How was I to know? I hadn't prohibited it (yet),
not having thought of the possibility. I won't get caught that way again!
(3-09)
1. Two good examples of this are Marcus (2009) and McCormick (2009). These
are just examples of the offense people take naturally at a medium that
basically affronts their sensibilities by being quick and not having the
visual aspect to reinforce the feelings one wants to convey.
2. I first learned this by doing a survey; it was pointed out to me
by one of my students. It makes sense to imagine that students know that
one must make preparatory remarks before one simply leaves; that this is
more important, and more complicated, in somewhat formal situations;
and, that it still has to be done in the context of a conversation that
is already going on.
3. I also required telling what you were
providing (we dropped URL's of our essays and such; so, rather than just
dropping the URL, which would be lit up, we would want to say, "this is
my essay: http://..." Also, I required that they at least try to answer
questions that were directed at them, though I made it clear that any
answer would suffice. So for example, if someone said, "how are you?"
they could be free to say, "No comment," or "None of your business,"
but not free to simply ignore the question.
4. A recent article (McCormick 2009) pointed out that LOL has come to mean
much more than simply “laugh out loud,” and in general is much milder
than actually laughing out loud, which it is assumed to represent. It
is my contention that variations in meaning are a kind of dialect,
likely to get wider as people in certain chat environments spend more
and more time together, isolated from others. In a classroom setting,
however, one assumes the opposite: that we have come from widely
divergent places; that we have very little in common except
semi-formal English; that some of us have very little actual exposure to
any chat environment. Still, I found symbols, emoticons, and
acronyms and chat abbreviations prolifically bantered around, as if
they were universal. Perhaps they are; LOL certainly is.
5. Naming
these skills and actually laying out their acquisition as teaching
objectives was to me one of the signatures of the communicative era;
communicative practitioners were correct in pointing out that perfect
grammar and vocabulary were pointless in situations where one couldn't
clarify, ask for repetition, hesitate successfully, etc., as well as do
the previously mentioned: say hello, say goodbye, indicate that one
needs to leave soon, etc.
6. Most common of these, which I believe I
have already addressed, is students' general inability to figure out
what to call the teacher when needing to address the teacher
only. It has always been high on my priority list to teach students how
to address their professors and other formal authorities in my life,
since I am keenly aware of how it grates my own ears to be addressed
with family name only, or "Mr." plus first name. Teaching with chat, I
have at least gotten the opportunity to try.
7. One example: one
term, I learned that my student had lost a couple thousand dollars in an
eBay scam. Should I tell others what I knew? What could I do for this
person, and would telling authorities really help anything? It felt
awkward, and I didn't know exactly how to respond.
bibliography
Barker, T. (2009, March 13). Texting surges as tool
for more than just the young. St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/sciencemedicine/story/
ECD541041F7853698625756E0012DB17?OpenDocument. Accessed 3-09.
Fischman, J. (2008, Oct. 13). Dear Professor, Students want to chat
with you. Chronicle.com, Wired Campus.
http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3384/dear-professor-students-
want-to-chat-with-you. Accessed 10-08.
Leverett, T. (2008a, Sept.)
Chat assignment: most students blast chat (6-2008). where u at w/chat weblog.
http://whereuatwchat.blogspot.com/2008/09/chat-assignment-most-students-blast.html.
___ (2008b, April). brb: Using chat in
an esl/efl writing class. From Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds, Demonstration, Writing IS, TESOL 2008, New
York City. http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/tw6.html.
___ (2008c, April). Digital fluency
as goal and objective. From Teaching writing in
online and paper worlds, Demonstration, Writing IS, TESOL 2008, New
York City. http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/tw4.html.
___ (2007a, Mar.). Fluency first:
Fluency as a construct. From Student weblogging
for fluency, skills and integration, Demonstration, Writing IS,
TESOL 2007, Seattle WA.
http://www.siu.edu/~cesl/teachers/pd/wf3.html
___ (2007b, May). Dialects in a
changing language. Global Study Magazine 4, 3. London. pp. 56-57.
Available online at:
http://globalstudymagazine.com/site/articles/359.
Marcus, M. (2009, Jan. 5). Social networks are intrusive. Martinsville (IN)
Reporter-Times.
http://www.reporter-times.com/stories/2009/01/05/opinion.qp-1241117.sto.
Accessed 1-09.
McCormick, M. (2009, Mar. 5).
Meg's Moments: Reality: the chatroom of the future.
http://chips.luther.edu/2009/03/05/meg%E2%80%99s-moments-reality-chatroom-future.html.
Accessed 3-09.
Links and resources
where u at w/chat weblog
Presentation home
Introduction & table of contents
Chat and esl/efl bibliography
[ CESL ][ Tom Leverett's weblog ]
behind pulliam, TL, from the pop collection
 Page maintained
by
Thomas
Leverett, CESL, SIUC
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