Natural interaction with a virtual guide in a virtual environment: A multimodal dialogue system

This paper describes the Virtual Guide, a multimodal dialogue system represented by an embodied conversational agent that can help users to find their way in a virtual environment, while adapting its affective linguistic style to that of the user. We discuss the modular architecture of the system, and describe the entire loop from multimodal input analysis to multimodal output generation. We also describe how the Virtual Guide detects the level of politeness of the user’s utterances in real-time during the dialogue and aligns its own language to that of the user, using different politeness strategies. Finally we report on our first user tests, and discuss some potential extensions to improve the system

Contrastive rhetoric of English persuasive correspondence in the Thai business context : cross-cultural sales promotion, request and invitation

This research focuses on the contrastive analysis of authentic persuasive business correspondence written in English by Thai speakers and native English speakers in the Thai business context. Three types of persuasive correspondence - sales promotion, request, and invitation - were analysed from contrastive text linguistic and pragmatic perspectives. The purpose was to examine, compare and contrast their rhetorical structures, functions and linguistic realisations as well as persuasive and politeness strategies, and to compare these features to those found in textbook samples of persuasive letters in order to investigate the extent to which those samples represent the authentic, real-life correspondence. The findings report on cross-cultural variations which differentiate the persuasive writing patterns and strategies of Thais and native English speakers. Despite some shared writing conventions, the findings reveal diversity in some rhetorical moves, linguistic realisations, rhetorical appeals and politeness strategies. The diversity includes some cultural-bound discourse patterns and cultural-specific textual features, many of which can be traced to interference from the Thai language and culture. An exploration of the nature of sales promotion, request, and invitation letters presented in one American and two Thai textbooks on Business English writing reveals that their letter samples reflect the characteristics of the authentic corpus in the business contexts to which they belong. The implications of this research are twofold. First, it has implications for the teaching of English business letter writing especially in the Thai context and the innovation of more advanced materials and methods for this pedagogical purpose. Second, it raises an awareness of differences in persuasive writing across languages and cultures, worth noting for developing cross-cultural understanding and communication strategies for effective intercultural business interactions in the dynamic business environment of the 21st century

Cold Calling in the Classroom: Exploring Student Perceptions of Instructor Communication using the Face Negotiation Theory

Using face negotiation theory (Ting-Toomey, 1988) as a theoretical framework, this dissertation sought to determine students’ perceptions of instructor communication during classroom discussions where instructors use cold calling tactics. According to FNT, students perceived that self-construal determines their face concern as either self, other/mutual face. Therefore, an instructor must determine the best facework strategies to prevent face loss during classroom discussions to maintain optimal student outcomes in communication satisfaction and motivation to participate. This was accomplished by using 8 hypothetical vignettes, a pilot test and an experiment that measured face threat, face support, student communication satisfaction and motivation, intention to participate. Results revealed that students with high independent self-construal scores will have more concern for their self-face. Similarly, students with higher interdependent self-construal scores were more likely to be concerned with other and mutual face, respectively. I also found that the higher the participant’s independent self-construal, the lower the positive face threat reported by the participant. Additional findings show that five of the facework strategies were perceived as face supportive for both positive and negative face. There were no differences among the vignettes in terms of students’ reported communication satisfaction and motivation or intention to participate. Students rated the vignettes equally low in terms of motivation to participate. They also reported that all the vignettes were associated with their intention to participate in subsequent classroom discussions. Finally, results show that cold calling, regardless of facework strategy, does not lead to student motivation to participate. This dissertation has several implications for how instructors and higher education administrators can utilize facework strategies to engage students in the classroom

The Finnish-Russian relationships: The interplay of economics, history, psychology and language

SPECIAL ISSUE: Intercultural Communication: Theory and PracticePeer reviewe

国際バカロレア教育と大学での教室内談話における相互作用と優位性 : 異文化間の視点から

談話の相互作用における優位性のパターンは，教室内の談話への参加度に応じて学生の教育機会へのアクセスに影響を与える。本稿では，国際バカロレア（IB）の教室と大学の教室における学生の経験を異文化の視点から詳しく調査する為に二つの異なる調査を用いた。まず1つ目の調査では，6学年から12学年までの100回の授業（教室エピソード）のビデオ録画を通して，教室内での談話の性質を調査した。その結果，教室内では様々の相互に密接に関連した談話や相互依存した談話が観察されたが，教師が決定的な役割を果たしていたことが判明した。談話とは形式と機能の両方で競合し，談話自体の中でも学生は優位性を競っていることが判明した。IBの教室内では，談話は意味交渉に重点が置かれていた。競合する談話の本質を詳細に検討する為に本稿では，1つ目の調査の結果を日本にいる異なった文化背景を持つ大学生の示した異文化交渉スタイルを調査した2つ目の研究結果と関連させて検証する。第二の研究では，異なる文化的背景を持つ大学生を対象とした3つの異なる交渉セッションの会話データを用いて，沈黙，話しの分配，質問，直接性／間接性などの言語戦略を特定し分析した。 結果によれば，異なる言語的交渉戦略が，文化的に多様な教室の文脈の中で非常に異なって使用され，解釈される可能性が高いことを示唆した。異文化間の視点を用いた2つ目の調査結果に基づいて，IB教室の談話を検討すると教師がIBの基本的理念に教室内の談話をより緊密に沿わせるためには，学生中心の授業戦略を導入するだけでは不十分であり，教室内での談話の性質向上には，学生の異文化間交流能力を向上させる必要があると提唱する。Patterns of interactional dominance influence students’ access to educational opportunities through degrees of participation in classroom discourse. In this paper, two separate studies are used to explore the classroom experience of students in International Baccalaureate (IB) classrooms and university classrooms from an intercultural perspective. The first is a study examining the nature of classroom discourse through video recordings of 100 classroom episodes from Year 6 to Year 12 revealing a wide range of intricately interconnected and interdependent discourses existing within the classrooms for which the teacher was the major determinant. It was found that discourses competed in terms of both form and function, and also within the discourse itself, students competed for dominance. Within an IB classroom context, discourse is focused on the negotiation of meaning. In order to examine the nature of competing discourses, this paper examines the results of the first study in relation to the findings of a second study investigating different negotiating styles across cultures demonstrated by university students in Japan from different cultural backgrounds. Using transcribed conversational data from three different negotiation sessions involving university students from different cultural backgrounds, the second study identified and found these were analyzed linguistic strategies such as silence, talk distribution, question asking and directness/indirectness were in relation to the reported perceptions of the participants. These findings suggest that different linguistic negotiation strategies are likely to be used and interpreted very differently within a culturally diverse classroom context. An examination of the IB classroom discourse in the first study using the intercultural perspective of the second study reveals that in order for a teacher to more closely align classroom discourse with IB philosophy, it may not be enough to introduce instructional strategies that support student-centered discourse; students’ intercultural interactional competencies also need to be developed

When to Say What and How: Adapting the Elaborateness and Indirectness of Spoken Dialogue Systems

With the aim of designing a spoken dialogue system which has the ability to adapt to the user's communication idiosyncrasies, we investigate whether it is possible to carry over insights from the usage of communication styles in human-human interaction to human-computer interaction. In an extensive literature review, it is demonstrated that communication styles play an important role in human communication. Using a multi-lingual data set, we show that there is a significant correlation between the communication style of the system and the preceding communication style of the user. This is why two components that extend the standard architecture of spoken dialogue systems are presented: 1) a communication style classifier that automatically identifies the user communication style and 2) a communication style selection module that selects an appropriate system communication style. We consider the communication styles elaborateness and indirectness as it has been shown that they influence the user's satisfaction and the user's perception of a dialogue. We present a neural classification approach based on supervised learning for each task. Neural networks are trained and evaluated with features that can be automatically derived during an ongoing interaction in every spoken dialogue system. It is shown that both components yield solid results and outperform the baseline in form of a majority-class classifier

Evaluating Human–Automation Etiquette Strategies to Mitigate User Frustration and Improve Learning in Affect-Aware Tutoring

Human–automation etiquette applies human–human etiquette conventions to human–computer interaction (HCI). The research described in this paper investigates how to mitigate user frustration and support student learning through changes in the style in which a computer tutor interacts with a learner. Frustration can significantly impact the quality of learning in tutoring. This study examined an approach to mitigate frustration through the use of different etiquette strategies to change the amount of imposition feedback placed on the learner. An experiment was conducted to explore how varying the interaction style of system feedback impacted aspects of the learning process. System feedback was varied through different etiquette strategies. Participants solved mathematics problems under different frustration conditions with feedback given in different etiquette styles. Changing etiquette strategies from one math problem to the next led to changes in motivation, confidence satisfaction, and performance. The most effective etiquette strategies changed depending on if the user was frustrated or not. This work aims to provide mechanisms to support the promotion of individualized learning in the context of high level math instruction by basing affect-aware adaptive tutoring system design on varying etiquette strategies

Uncovering Embedded Face Threat Mitigation in Landscape Architecture Critique Feedback

Receiving public feedback on academic work may threaten students’ face, particularly when such feedback is critical. One way that feedback may be cushioned is through face-threat mitigation techniques. I analyzed the use of such techniques in the feedback given by faculty and professionals to landscape architecture students as preparation for integrating communication instruction into these courses. This analysis revealed that informal language was the most prevalent technique employed by both faculty and professionals. Findings also indicated that faculty offered more direct advice to students than professionals, potentially fulfilling students’ desires for relevant feedback. The marked differences between faculty and professionals patterns point to different interpretations of and goals in providing feedback. The analysis concludes with a discussion of this study’s implications for future research on feedback

Designing Embodied Interactive Software Agents for E-Learning: Principles, Components, and Roles

Embodied interactive software agents are complex autonomous, adaptive, and social software systems with a digital embodiment that enables them to act on and react to other entities (users, objects, and other agents) in their environment through bodily actions, which include the use of verbal and non-verbal communicative behaviors in face-to-face interactions with the user. These agents have been developed for various roles in different application domains, in which they perform tasks that have been assigned to them by their developers or delegated to them by their users or by other agents. In computer-assisted learning, embodied interactive pedagogical software agents have the general task to promote human learning by working with students (and other agents) in computer-based learning environments, among them e-learning platforms based on Internet technologies, such as the Virtual Linguistics Campus (www.linguistics-online.com). In these environments, pedagogical agents provide contextualized, qualified, personalized, and timely assistance, cooperation, instruction, motivation, and services for both individual learners and groups of learners. This thesis develops a comprehensive, multidisciplinary, and user-oriented view of the design of embodied interactive pedagogical software agents, which integrates theoretical and practical insights from various academic and other fields. The research intends to contribute to the scientific understanding of issues, methods, theories, and technologies that are involved in the design, implementation, and evaluation of embodied interactive software agents for different roles in e-learning and other areas. For developers, the thesis provides sixteen basic principles (Added Value, Perceptible Qualities, Balanced Design, Coherence, Consistency, Completeness, Comprehensibility, Individuality, Variability, Communicative Ability, Modularity, Teamwork, Participatory Design, Role Awareness, Cultural Awareness, and Relationship Building) plus a large number of specific guidelines for the design of embodied interactive software agents and their components. Furthermore, it offers critical reviews of theories, concepts, approaches, and technologies from different areas and disciplines that are relevant to agent design. Finally, it discusses three pedagogical agent roles (virtual native speaker, coach, and peer) in the scenario of the linguistic fieldwork classes on the Virtual Linguistics Campus and presents detailed considerations for the design of an agent for one of these roles (the virtual native speaker)