Next, I listened to the audio recordings of the students’ group discussions and
marked the places where disagreement took place. I then played back each
disagreement sequence several times to ensure that an opinion-negotiation sequence
(Mori, 1999), whether in an expressly formulated or implied manner, did indeed occur.
After identifying possible disagreement sequences for the development of the
assessment video task, I selected sequences based on the five following factors.
First, a long disagreement sequence could either distract students from focusing
on the focal action or not allow enough time for group discussion. Given this risk, the
length of a video sequence for the assessment task was kept under three minutes.
Second, the quality of the recording was considered. This issue was more evident in
the advanced level class because the class had the maximum number of 20 students
background noise would sometimes be so loud that it rendered the recording of the
individual group discussion nearly inaudible. In such cases, I used Audacity, an audio
editing and recording application, to clean up the background noise. However, if the
noise could not be reduced and the recording was not audible enough, the sequence
was excluded. Third, sequences that contained a strong personal opinion on the
subject were not considered because they might divert students’ attention toward the “content” or the “subject” of the talk, rather than the pragmatic action in progress. For example, a disagreeing response that says “I hate people who changed their gender”
would be so opinionated that it may trigger a discussion that is not relevant to the
research purpose. Hence, sequences involving extremely emotional opinions were not
included. Fourth, since much of the sequences’ background information were likely to
be lost in a short video clip, it became necessary to ensure that the situational context
of the sequences were easy to follow and students would be able to quickly
understand what happened in the interactions. As a result, sequences that were not
easily accessible and comprehensible were not used as part of the assessment
materials. Lastly, various sequential organizations of disagreement were considered to
present students with a range of possible disagreement delivery forms. Disagreements
that were considered direct and unmitigated as well as disagreements that were
delayed and elaborated were selected.
All five factors were considered in the selection process and they all served the
goal of creating a video task that focused students’ attention on the targeted pragmatic
phenomenon. In the end, five disagreement sequences (Task 1~Task 5) were selected
from the data set for the pilot, whereas Task 6 (Afghanistan war) was considered but
put on hold due to its much longer length (3 minutes and 36 seconds) (see Table 1).
Task Title Length Disagreement
1 Failure of education 58 seconds without mitigation 2 All the world 43 seconds without mitigation 3 Cloning 2 minutes 3 seconds with mitigation 4 Cell phone 1 minute 4 seconds without mitigation 5 American military base 50 seconds with mitigation
6 Afghanistan war 3 minutes & 36 seconds Agreement plus disagreement *The faces of two participants, Wen in Task 3 (Cloning) and Jon in Task 5 (American military base) and Task 6 (Afghanistan war), were blurred in the video clips because they indicated in their consent forms that they did not want their faces to be
recognized.
The following excerpt from Task 1 provides an example of a strong disagreement
without mitigation or delay.
3.1 Task 1: Failure of Education
1 Ken: you know that, the failu- first of all I think it is 2 a failure of education in the family
3 (1.0)
4 Hong: educa[tion?
5 Ken: [responsi- of course responsibility of your parents
6 is very imp[ortant
7 Hong: [NO:: 8 Ken: OH [you-
9 Hong: [sometimes you can [( )
10 Ken: [first of all, yah yah I-I-will 11 tell you because you know that in the family you can 12 educate with your kids, you can give him see: (0.5) eh 13 for example, you can explain to him about this
14 transsexualism, about that about this and then he 15 will understand WHAT is this. and then in the future
16 [of course
17 Hong: [sometimes he or she know: that that- transsexual 18 can- cannot uh:: cannot uh[: (0.4) control herself 19 Ron: [if this situation happen to me 20 Hong: maybe your parent can advise and treat him (0.3)
22 Ken: NO. it it- that’s why I said that it’s the
23 responsibility of the parents who have to educate 24 well your children, it’s IMPORTANT.
The segment presents a student discussion on what the participants would do if
their children wanted to have transgender surgery. During the discussion, Ken and
Hong present their contrasting opinions on the issue, which escalates into overt
disagreement. As we can see, in line 7, Hong starts up her disagreement with the
outright negative token NO::, spoken loudly and with sound stretches. Similarly, with
no gap between turns, in line 22, Ken responds with the unmitigated and loud-spoken
negative token NO. By delivering the direct negation in overlap with the prior
speaker’s talk, or immediately upon completion of the prior turn, Hong and Ken show
a lack of mitigation and delay in their disagreement.