Negotiation of meaning via virtual exchange in immersive virtual reality environments

This study examines how English-as-lingua-franca (ELF) learners employ semiotic resources, including head movements, gestures, facial expression, body posture, and spatial juxtaposition, to negotiate for meaning in an immersive virtual reality (VR) environment. Ten ELF learners participated in a Taiwan-Spain VR virtual exchange project and completed two VR tasks on an immersive VR platform. Multiple datasets, including the recordings of VR sessions, pre- and post-task questionnaires, observation notes, and stimulated recall interviews, were analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively with triangulation. Built upon multimodal interaction analysis (Norris, 2004) and Varonis and Gass’ (1985a) negotiation of meaning model, the findings indicate that ELF learners utilized different embodied semiotic resources in constructing and negotiating meaning at all primes to achieve effective communication in an immersive VR space. The avatar-mediated representations and semiotic modalities were shown to facilitate indication, comprehension, and explanation to signal and resolve non-understanding instances. The findings show that with space proxemics and object handling as the two distinct features of VR-supported environments, VR platforms transform learners’ social interaction from plane to three-dimensional communication, and from verbal to embodied, which promotes embodied learning. VR thus serves as a powerful immersive interactive environment for ELF learners from distant locations to be engaged in situated languacultural practices that goes beyond physical space. Pedagogical implications are discussed