Conversations—and negotiated interaction—in text and voice chat rooms

Despite the expanded use of the Internet for language learning and practice, little attention if any has been given to the quality of interaction among English L2 speakers in conversational text or voice chat rooms. This study explored the patterns of repair moves in synchronous non-native speaker (NNS) text chat rooms in comparison to voice chat rooms on the Internet. The following questions were posed: (a) Which types of repair moves occur in text and voice chats; and (b) what are the differences, if any, between the repair moves in text chats and voice chats when time is held constant? Repair moves made by anonymous NNSs in 10, 5-minute, synchronous chat room sessions (5 text-chat sessions, 5 voice-chat sessions) were counted and analyzed using chi-square with alpha set at.05. Significant differences were found between the higher number of total repair moves made in voice chats and the smaller number in text chats. Qualitative data analysis showed that repair work in voice chats was often pronunciation-related. The study includes discussion that may affect teachers and learners considerations of the value of NNS chat room interaction for second language development. LANGUAGE LEARNING VIA INTERACTION AND REPAIR MOVES Social interaction is essential to language learning, according to the arguments presented by studies based in the communicative approach to language teaching (see, e.g., Hall Verplaetse, 2000; Lantolf, 2000; Long, 1983, 1996; Pica, 1994). Empirical evidence suggests that social interaction is a wellspring for negotiation of meaning, a communicative exchange that sustains and repairs conversations (Long 1983, 1996; Pica, 1994). Negotiation of meaning is a cognitive process that speakers use to better understand one another, that is, to increase the comprehensibility of language input. Furthermore, negotiation of