2018 Volume 169 Pages 62-77
Aiming at future redesign of interactive conversation activities, this paper analyzes and discusses how conversations are generated and structured in the activities practiced in the author's Japanese language class at a university. Two main objectives are mentioned by international students at the time the class starts every year: to improve Japanese communication skills and to achieve their individual purpose using Japanese (a desire to become an effective member of a laboratory). The author accordingly has designed and practiced interactive conversation activities in the class focusing on the latter objective of the students. The harmonious movement among the participants towards the goal of a conversation (fluctuation) was measured from the viewpoints of “listening, connecting and backtracking” based on data consisting of taped conversations and reflection sheets filled in by the participants after each activity. The measured values were used to create a time axis graph to visualize the change in the movement of the conversations; the graph was then used for analysis and discussion. The result showed that there are three elements largely involved in generating and structuring conversations: how group activities are carried out, attitudes and style of participation in conversations, and the necessity of providing support and good environment for conversations.
