{"title":"Promoting common ground building in L2 cross-cultural\u0000 conversations","authors":"Maryam Sadat Mirzaei, Kourosh Meshgi, T. Nishida","doi":"10.14705/rpnet.2021.54.1336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14705/rpnet.2021.54.1336","url":null,"abstract":"Teaching culture out of context may not be the optimal approach, yet it\u0000 could be achieved by immersive technologies. This study uses an immersive\u0000 theme-based environment and focuses on cross-cultural interactions between\u0000 learners of different cultures in goal-oriented scenarios. We collected\u0000 interactions among learners with different cultural backgrounds and\u0000 annotated common ground formation and conversation breakdowns in those\u0000 interactions. Next, we recreated the scenarios in a 3D immersive environment\u0000 using an in-house situation creation toolkit to enable experiencing the\u0000 situation by using choices to navigate the conversation and observing the\u0000 consequences. In case the conversation derails, we provide timely\u0000 scaffolding by offering appropriate communication strategies to rebuild\u0000 common ground. Learners can be the actors of the scenarios but can also be\u0000 the observers by switching between roles and points of view. Preliminary\u0000 experiments with 20 L2 learners of English from different cultures showed\u0000 that practicing with immersive conversational game-play is effective for\u0000 raising cultural awareness and learning to choose appropriate strategies for\u0000 smooth interactions.","PeriodicalId":350173,"journal":{"name":"CALL and professionalisation: short papers from EUROCALL 2021","volume":"68 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-12-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124261906","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}