scholarly journals A semiotic perspective on webconferencing-supported language teaching

ReCALL ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Guichon ◽  
Ciara R. Wigham
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Business Students ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
Trainee Teachers ◽  
Desktop Videoconferencing ◽  
Screen Shot ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Communicative Gestures ◽  
Undergraduate Business Students

AbstractIn webconferencing-supported teaching, the webcam mediates and organizes the pedagogical interaction. Previous research has provided a mixed picture of the use of the webcam: while it is seen as a useful medium to contribute to the personalization of the interlocutors’ relationship, help regulate interaction and facilitate learner comprehension and involvement, the limited access to visual cues provided by the webcam is felt to be useless or even disruptive.This study examines the meaning-making potential of the webcam in pedagogical interactions from a semiotic perspective by exploring how trainee teachers use the affordances of the webcam to produce non-verbal cues that may be useful for mutual comprehension. The research context is a telecollaborative project where trainee teachers of French as a foreign language (FFL) met for online sessions in French with undergraduate Business students at an Irish university. Using multimodal transcriptions of the interaction data from these sessions, screen shot data, and students’ post-course interviews, it was found, firstly, that while a head and shoulders framing shot was favoured by the trainee teachers, there does not appear to be an optimal framing choice for desktop videoconferencing among the three framing types identified. Secondly, there was a loss between the number of gestures performed by the trainee teachers and those that were visible for the students. Thirdly, when trainee teachers were able to coordinate the audio and kinesic modalities, communicative gestures that were framed, and held long enough to be perceived by the learners, were more likely to be valuable for mutual comprehension.The study highlights the need for trainee teachers to develop critical semiotic awareness to gain a better perception of the image they project of themselves in order to actualise the potential of the webcam and add more relief to their online teacher presence.

scholarly journals THE REPRESENTATION OF EXPERIENCE IN UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS STUDENTS’ TEXTS: A FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS OF MULTIMODAL MEANING MAKING RESOURCES IN MARKETING TEXTS

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Hesham Suleiman Alyousef
Keyword(s):  
Functional Analysis ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Systemic Functional Linguistics ◽  
Business Students ◽  
Marketing Plan ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Mathematical Symbolism ◽  
Written Assignments ◽  
Model Texts ◽  
Undergraduate Business Students

From the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) standpoint, experiential meanings reflect our experience, perceptions, and consciousness. Research on experiential meaningmaking in tertiary contexts has traditionally focused on areas such as mathematics, journalism and media, science and computing, nursing, and history. This paper aims to investigate the experiential multimodal meanings in an undergraduate marketing course. The data comprised three written assignments and the tutor’s two model texts. The study employed a multidimensional approach by Alyousef (2013), which is framed by SFL (Halliday 2014) and O’Halloran’s (2005, 1998, 2008, 1999) multisemiotic framework for the analysis of semiotic codes in mathematics. The results showed that the experiential meanings in the students’ marketing plan texts were primarily construed through material processes and both explicit and implicit relational identifying processes. The findings indicated how mathematical symbolism is encoded in the multisemiotic texts, in the most economical manner, by using grammatical strategies of structural condensation. The results also noted the extent to which the different modes of meaning were integrated in the texts.

Hearing words changes color perception: Facilitation of color discrimination by verbal and visual cues

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis Forder ◽  
Gary Lupyan
Keyword(s):  
Visual Cues ◽  
Color Word ◽  
Color Perception ◽  
Color Discrimination ◽  
Target Color ◽  
Discrimination Accuracy ◽  
Verbal Cues ◽  
The Moment

As part of learning some languages, people learn to name colors using categorical labels such as “red”, “yellow”, and “green”. Such labeling clearly facilitates communicating about colors, but does it also impact color perception? We demonstrate that simply hearing color words enhances categorical color perception, improving people’s accuracy in discriminating between simultaneously presented colors in an untimed task. Immediately after hearing a color word participants were better able to distinguish between colors from the named category and colors from nearby categories. Discrimination was also enhanced between typical and atypical category members. Verbal cues slightly decreased discrimination accuracy between two typical shades of the named color. In contrast to verbal cues, a preview of the target color, an arguably more informative cue, failed to yield any changes to discrimination accuracy. The finding that color words strongly affect color discrimination accuracy suggests that categorical color perception may be due to color representations being augmented in-the-moment by language.

Cognitive Style and Sex: A Study of Stereotypical Thinking

2008 ◽  
Vol 102 (3) ◽  
pp. 739-744
Author(s):  
Havva J. Meric ◽  
Margaret M. Capen
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Style ◽  
Linear Model ◽  
Work Experience ◽  
Business Students ◽  
General Linear Model ◽  
General Linear ◽  
Male Undergraduate ◽  
Undergraduate Business Students

Differences between Cognitive Style Index mean scores of female and male undergraduate business students were tested using a general linear model. Among 286 undergraduate business students, women scored higher (more analytical) than men. The comparison of undergraduate business students with and without work experience related to their major shows that students with such related work experience were more intuitive than peers with no work experience related to their major.

Developing business students’ intercultural competence through intercultural virtual collaboration: a task sequence implementation

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luana Ferreira-Lopes ◽  
Iciar Elexpuru-Albizuri ◽  
María José Bezanilla
Keyword(s):  
Intercultural Competence ◽  
Business Students ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Learning Potential ◽  
Task Sequence ◽  
Virtual Collaboration ◽  
Intercultural Relationships ◽  
Pedagogical Strategies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Undergraduate Business Students

Purpose Allowing for interaction with foreign cultures without the need to travel, intercultural virtual collaboration represents a potential tool to develop business students’ intercultural competence. This study aims to explore students’ perceptions towards the implementation of a research-based task sequence in a project in which undergraduate Business students from Spain collaborated virtually with undergraduate business students from The Netherlands during a semester. More specifically, this paper investigates what intercultural competence indicators were mostly developed by the sequence implemented; how much each task from the sequence in question developed different intercultural competence indicators; and how much students enjoyed participating in each task. Design/methodology/approach Data was collected through after-task reflection questionnaires. A quantitative analysis of Likert-type questions was carried out and open-ended responses were used to illustrate findings. Findings Results reveal that the task sequence developed different dimensions of students’ intercultural competence and, particularly, fostered a positive attitude towards intercultural relationships, increased students’ cultural knowledge and awareness and equipped students with skills to work in diverse teams. It also showed that as complexity grew along the sequence, the average students’ perception of their intercultural competence development tended to decrease. The majority of students’ very much liked participating in the different tasks. Originality/value Designing telecollaborative projects can be very challenging and understanding the learning potential of different pedagogical strategies for virtual collaborative environments can help teachers to take better-informed decisions.

scholarly journals Gauging reflexive historical thinking: An exploratory study of Columbian undergraduates

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-155
Author(s):  
Joshua Large ◽  
◽  
Juan Pablo Román Calderón
Keyword(s):  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Business Students ◽  
Private University ◽  
Historical Thinking ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Thinking Skill ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Economic Ideology ◽  
Historical Agency ◽  
Undergraduate Business Students

This study gauges the development of an historical thinking skill we term reflexive historical thinking and its relationship to economic ideology among a group of undergraduate business students in an introductory history course at a Colombian private university. A survey was conducted twice during a semester in which students answered questions regarding historical agency, personal agency, and economic ideology. We measured the relationships and changes in responses regarding these factors. We hypothesized that students with greater awareness of broad social and economic forces as determinants of historical events would also be aware of an array of social and economic forces informing their personal outlooks. Moreover, we expected such awareness – both historical and personal – to increase during the course. Finally, we wondered how economic ideology influences such awareness. We found little support for the expectation that reflexive historical thinking developed over time, but interesting correlations between historical thinking and economic ideology.

The heroes of the pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 07 (01) ◽  
pp. 9-29
Author(s):  
Sebastian Moreno Barreneche
Keyword(s):  
Health Economics ◽  
Collective Identity ◽  
Healthcare Workers ◽  
Meaning Making ◽  
Discursive Construction ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Semiotic Perspective ◽  
Economics And Politics

Besides its impact on health, economics, and politics, the COVID-19 pandemic was the source of phenomena of a discursive nature, specifically regarding the solutions found by societies to make sense of the crisis caused by the uncontrolled spread of the virus. This article analyzes from a socio-semiotic perspective the construction process of the collective identity of “the healthcare workers” during the pandemic. After generally introducing semiotics as the discipline interested in meaning-making and signification, the article studies four semiotic mechanisms present in the discursive construction of any collective identity. It then moves on to its main goal: the analysis of the functioning of those four mechanisms in the specific case of “the healthcare workers,” a collective identity that, since the beginning of 2020, has been central in the narratives that emerged around the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, it should render visible the semiotic mechanisms of segmentation, actorialization, generalization, and axiologization.

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