2020 Volume 22 Issue 2 Pages 62-77
The purpose of this study is to examine the unique features of topic divisions identified by novices in conversational data analysis, what criteria they considered in identifying those topic divisions, and what teaching methods are most suited to novices. First, 40 Japanese undergraduate students watched a 10-minute video-clip of a Japanese-language conversation between two Japanese native speakers who were meeting for the first time. The 40 students were then asked to identify topic divisions and topic titles, and to describe the features of verbal/nonverbal devices which appeared in these topic divisions. Then, the authors calculated how often the students identified the same utterance as the place where a topic division should be made, and then examined the features of topic divisions which featured a high rate of consistency and those with a low rate of consistency. As a result, the authors found that although the rates of consistency of topic divisions were varied, the students did notice several verbal/nonverbal devices as hints to topic division. Lastly, we proposed a method for novices for considering criteria of topic division.
