情報処理学会 インタラクション 2017
IPSJ Interaction 20172-508-38
2017/3/2

A Study On Enhancing Simultaneous Second Language Speaking Skill :Strict Turn-Taking in A Half-duplex Dual-lingual Video Chat
BUI BA HOANG ANH†1	  KAZUSHI NISHIMOTO†1	
  	
 
	
  	
 
Abstract: This paper examines the improvement of users using BiTak that is assessed objectively by certified language teachers
following the scoring tool named Rubric. We created a video chat system named BiTak, which employs strict turn-taking dual-lingual communication using recording function. BiTak aims to motivate the dual-lingual conversation between Japanese andInternational students as well as to identify the mutual benefits through this kind of conversation for the need of improving simultaneous bilingual acquisition. We conducted experiments to evaluate the effectiveness of BiTak as well as the improvement oflearners through using it and found that the system brings about the sense of language learning and favorably boost students’
speaking skills.

1. Introduction

	
  	
 

Due to the growing influence of international mass
media, global communication through Internet, it is crucial for many people to learn to speak other languages in
addition to their first language. Apart from many ways oflearning a second language, people tend to find chance topractice speaking second language with native speakers
through informal communication to better improve theirspeaking skills. It is the most popular way to learn a language as well as effective way most people use when they
live in the country where the language is spoken. However, it is not always easy to get an opportunity of speaking
with native speakers face-to-face. In the previous study[1], we suggested a virtual environment for students tofreely practice second languages with supporting elements.
Specifically, the study proposed a video chat system
named “BiTak” to facilitate strict turn-taking dual-lingual
communication for language speaking practice. The system is equipped with a recording function that can discretely record each utterance of all speakers and strictly
asks users to take turn to talk. In particular, this study isdesigned to examine the improvement of users using
BiTak that is assessed objectively by certified language
teachers following the scoring tool named Rubric.

2.

BackgroundSome conventional ways of learning languages

have	
  been applied such as attending classes, group discussion and learning, self-study. Apparently, there is not
the most appropriate method, people learn in different
ways at different paces, and the most effective way may
involve not one but a mixture of different techniques.
†1 Graduate School of Advanced Siceince and Technology, Japan Advanced
Institute of Science and Technology© 2017 Information Processing Society of Japan

Moreover, there have been no methods that satisfy both
requirements that meet the demand of both Japanese andinternationals. The ordinary methods satisfied only either
requirement. Since there are complementary requirements,
there should be a method that satisfies both requirements
at the same time. Kimber, L. [2] recommends providing
more opportunities for interactions between Japanese andinternationals to satisfy both.
Being inspired by that recommendation, our study
suggests building an online environment for both Japanese and internationals to talk freely using both English
and Japanese. We propose a video chat system named
BiTak that employs strict turn-taking dual-lingual communication using Recording function [1].
Dual-Lingual Communication
The concept of Dual-lingual Communication in thisresearch is defined as two languages being spoken in theconversation and understood by respective participating
parties. Namely, Japanese students will use English while
foreign students will speak Japanese though they canswitch to his or her mother tongue at any time. This isdifferent from bi-/multilingual communication. Myers-Scotton [3] defines bi-/multilingual as “the ability to
use two or more languages to sufficiently carry on a limited casual conversation”.
During the conversation, Japanese and internationals will have chance to speak second language. They will
help each other correct speaking mistakes by using theirnative language (in this case internationals using English).
It will be a good opportunity for both parties to learn fromeach other to make comfortable communication.
Strict Turn-taking
Talking naturally without caring overlapping usu-

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ally brings about the comfort of expressing ideas in an
informal conversation. Smooth turn-taking is an essential

Besides, research in computer-mediated communication has also inferred that a student’s willingness to

aspect to coordinate one’s communicative actions andinteract successfully with others. However, it is not al-communicate may be positively affected by computer.
Specifically, Freiermuth [6][7] claimed that when as-ways good for learning a language. You may hardly recognize your speaking mistakes by yourself although thesigned a group task or presentation, group language
learners seemed more eager to communicate using com-listeners can understand clearly. In many researches ofsecond language learning, the fact that turn-taking incommunication may affect the quality of group discussion

puter-mediated communication tool than using spoken
language. They felt more freedom in expressing their ideas without being hindered from the teacher or other stu-

between non-native and native speakers has been taken
into consideration. According to Mynard, J. [4], foreign

dents or a plethora of other elements that might minimize
the effect of the experience [8]. After making interviews

students seemed “to be overwhelmed and even lost inparallel and fast discussion, especially students who haveabout preference of media use of non-native speakers,
Setlock, L. D., & Fussell, S. R. [9] also showed thatslow keyboarding skills, slow reading/writing skills, ordifferent cultural backgrounds.”

non-native speakers preferred online chatting tools because these tools reduced the risk of misunderstandings

Hence, our system would like to strictly apply theturn-taking approach by using Recording function. In ourthat often caused by language problems.
The potential of computer-mediated communica-

system, users are asked to entirely obey the turn-taking
rule and they are not allowed to overlap or interrupt an-tion tools in facilitating second language acquisition has
been mentioned in various current researches. Angelova,

other speaker while turning on the recording button. We
suppose that the unfamiliar way of strict turn-taking willbring about unexpected but possible outcomes.

M., & Zhao, Y. [10] conducted a collaborative online
project between students from China and United States ofAmerica. They were paired up to communicate using the

The rest of this paper is organized as the followings.
Section 3 reviews related works and correlates them withdiscussion board and e-mail tools for tutoring and learning different aspects of English grammar and developing

our proposed system. The description of our prototype
system is mentioned in Section 4. Section 5 describes theculture awareness. The American students tried to correct
mistakes of their Chinese partners in writing introduction

experiments to estimate the proposed system as well as
mentions its results which is assessed objectively by lan-essays or cultural lessons. The Chinese students usede-mail as well as Skype to communicate with their Amer-guage teachers using Rubric scoring scale. The effectiveness of the system is also discussed in Section 5 by com-

ican partners. Apart from the benefits collected from different aspects, the study concluded that comput-

paring two experiment groups, one using ”strict
turn-taking” with the recording button and one without
using it. Section 6 concludes the paper.

er-mediated communication are used as a bridge to connect students from two different countries and two different programs to improve the teaching skills of the

3. Related Works

American as well as to enhance non-native speakers’
language skills. Another research proposed a mobile sys-

Online systems support language learning
Recent researches have shown that computer-mediated communication tools are considered as potential source for students to enhance their language proficiency. In Freiermuth, M., & Jarrell, D. [5], their research of second language learning asserted that whencompared with face-to-face communication, online chatting provided a more comfortable environment for foreign
students to make conversations. In spite of facing thepressure of immediacy that is typically expected byspeakers in face-to-face communication, students found it
less burden when communicating or discussing throughtext chat.

© 2017 Information Processing Society of Japan

tem called Xpress to support second language learners
gain colloquial expressions by crowdsourcing native
speakers [11]. The results of the study indicated firmly
Xpress’s potential in helping the second language learners
effectively learn colloquial expressions by their designideas.
In addition, videoconferencing that has been calledvisual collaboration is becoming noticeable in the benefitsof online language learning. Hampel, R., & Stickler, U.
[12] conducted research about videoconferencing in supporting multimodal interaction in an online language
classroom. The study concentrated on the use of videoconferencing in the context of a larger exploratory study

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to find out how language-learning interaction was influenced by the virtual learning environment. The findings demonstrated how an online videoconferencing environment can be applied in language teaching as well as
how teachers and learners collaborate in online environment.
Nevertheless, few studies have aimed to utilize
video chat applications for supporting simultaneous
learning of multiple languages. Our study proposes avideo chat system as a virtual turn-taking face-to-faceenvironment for users to practice dual-lingual conversation. Instead of choosing one partner’s language over theother, they practice “dual-lingual” pattern. It is a communication pattern in which each partner actively uses his or
her second language and receives the partner’s second
language in response. This video chat system will support
group turn-taking conversations speaking Japanese andEnglish in which their voices and images will be intentionally recorded so that they can re-listen to utterances
again at anytime.
Assessment of Second Language Speaking Proficiency
According to James E.Purpura [13], the term Language Assessment refers not only to formal tests like
TOEFL, IELTS or an end-of-chapter evaluation, but also
to other methods of obtaining information aboutknowledge, skills, and ability of students such as observing second language performance during pair work or byasking learners to report their understandings and uncertainties. In this paper, we would like to use Rubric: ascoring guide used to evaluate the quality of students’constructed responses to assess their second language
speaking proficiency. The usefulness of Rubric has beenrecognized in the field of assessment for many decades[14]. When utilizing a Rubric, evaluators use an analytic
rating system whereby each component is scored individually or performance is rated holistically on the basisof an overall impression [15]. We create our Rubric for
Speaking Skill Test based on four criteria: “Relevance &Content”, “Fluency”, “Vocabulary & Word Choice”, and“Interviews: Does interviewee understand question?”

4. BiTak System
We developed a web application called “BiTak”
using the open source from WebRTC [16], which is a free,open project that provides browsers and mobile applications with real-time communications with simple APIs.
Fig.1 shows the user interface of BiTak. The most prominent features of BiTak is following two functions: 1) a

© 2017 Information Processing Society of Japan

Figure 1 User Interface of BiTak
strict turn-taking function by discretely recording eachutterance and 2) a text chat function related to each recorded utterance. In the following sections, these twofunctions are described in detail.
4.1 Strict turn-taking function by discretely recording
each utterance
Each utterance in BiTak is recorded in order to give
participants a chance to watch the video again to fully
understand the dual-lingual situation, not to realize multi-threaded communication. When a person wants to talk,he/she just needs to click on the Recording button
then his/her voice will be automatically recorded. At thesame time, others’ microphone will be off; they can do
nothing but listen to the speaker. After the speaker finishes talking, he/she clicks the Recording Button again, theblue recording link will appear in the right pane of themain window chat (See Fig.1). The next person will taketurn to talk by repeatedly clicking the Recording Button.
Therefore, the communication style with using BiTak isin a half-duplex manner similar to that of a transceiver.
The users can download all the recording videos for further reference．
4.2 Text chat function related to each recorded utterance
The recording link will lead users to another tab
where they can re-watch the video (See Fig.2). Meanwhile, the main chat will be still facilitated without any
interruption. If, for example, an utterance in English froma Japanese participant includes some errors or unsuitable
expressions, it should be corrected immediately. In orderto readily achieve it, we provide a text chat function toeach recording link, not to all recording links. The users
can chat, ask or point out any unclear points by typing
text in the chat bar right beside the recording video. Thisfeature is designed not only for each recording link but
also for the main chat to achieve deeper understanding．

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Figure 3
Figure 2	 Experiment Description

An example of the recording link

5. Experiment and Discussion
5.1 Experiment Procedure

In order to achieve objective results of Bitak, we
compared the experiences of the two 4-member groups
using just the interface of Bitak (i.e., a simple video conferencing system without the recording function) withwhom used all the functions of Bitak. Meanwhile, both of
the two groups will apply dual-lingual communication to
discuss. Each group consists of 2 foreign students who
speak English as a second language and 2 Japanese as
specifically described in Fig. 3.
To measure the improvement of speaking skill after

Figure 4

Result of Rubric

using Bitak, all subjects were supposed to attend
pre-experiment evaluation and post-experiment evaluation.

first author. The individual interview questions wereguided by the general themes which aims to gain thinking

Specifically, the Japanese students were interviewed theirEnglish speaking skills by a certified English teacher andthe foreign students were interviewed their Japanese

about Dual-lingual communication and Strict turn-taking
with Recording function. Besides, the questions were also

speaking skills by a certified Japanese teacher. The interview questions during the two evaluations remain unchanged and their improvement is assessed followed arubric for Testing Speaking Skill specially designed forthe task.
Each group was required to participate in a series ofopen-ended enough for us to be able to pursue new topics
raised by the participants. Each interview was recorded
and transcribed to text then the transcripts were informally analyzed.
5.2 Results analysis:
5.2.1 Result of Rubric:

six experiments in which they could discuss intensively
the topics given in the evaluation interview. Each experi-

The speaking performance of all subjects in theevaluations were assessed by four criteria: “Relevance &Content”, “Fluency”, “Vocabulary & Word Choice”, andment lasted about 90 minutes. While Group 1 held their
discussion using BiTak without turning on Recording“Interviews: Does interviewee understand question?” assummarized in Fig. 4.

function which also means strict turn-taking is not employed either, Group 2’s discussions used BiTak with
employing Recording function and strict turn-taking ap-

As can be seen from the Fig. 4, all participants
showedsufficient
improvement
betweentheproach. To ensure unbiased improvement, all subjects
were requested not to use any other kinds of language
learning tools during the period of experiments.
In addition, each subject was asked to attend a
30-minute individual semi-structured interview with the© 2017 Information Processing Society of Japanpre-experiment and post-experiment evaluation. The distinctions also varied from small to big proportion in bothgroups. Interestingly, all subjects received positive feedbacks from the two examiners for their progress duringexperiment period and subjects in group2 slightly received more appreciation for their improvements. For

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Japanese students (J1, J3, and J4), they were highly
praised in gaining confidence of speaking. As most ofthem were seen to reluctant to answer the questions in thefirst evaluation, their attitude remarkably changed after

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level. The more familiar they get with BiTak, the more
motivated they are to speak.
üHesitate to correct friends’ mistake while in the
middle of conversation.

the series of six experiments. The certified English teacher was amazed at their fluency in the second evaluation

When being asked about helping to correct others’
mistakes, most of subjects in the group revealed that they

and all of them got better score in this criteria. Besides,
the foreign students (E3 and E4) were considerably appreciated by the certified Japanese teacher about theirhesitate to do that due to they were in the middle of conversation. They sometimes recognized their friends’ mistakes but neglected them to wait for the conversations tochanges in expressing ideas and choosing words. Whilethey often answered in short phrases and simple words infinish then unintentionally forgot the errors.
v Group 2:

the first interview, they managed to answer the samequestion in full sentences and more complicated phrasesü Usability:
For the first time, it is really difficult for this groupin the second one. It could be possibly explained that
thanks to helping each other revising the mistakes they

to use strict turn-taking. Interestingly, they deliberately
discuss the way to communicate in Bitak without any

made (as they stated in the individual interview), group 2
showed better enhancement in the second evaluation.

instructions of the authors to make the communication
went smoothly: applying dual-lingual conversation with

The unexpected direction was indicated in the
fourth criteria. This criterion assesses the ability of un-

strict turn-taking for presentation, using recording link forrealizing mistakes and normal conversation for correcting

derstanding the interview questions without asking for
repetition. While the majority of subjects showed theirimprovement in this measure, some of them (J2, J3 andmistake and discussion.
The members steadily reported that this system aim
to learn language, not merely for chatting. When they doJ4) unanticipatedly lost concentration and used the repetition clues as “Pardon, please”, “Could you please repeat

the presentation in the recording part, only one person
have to talk. They felt that it is a good challenge for themthe question?”. Thus, there was no wonder in the decreaseof their score in this criteria in the second interview.

because they can do a lot of presentation to train theirspeaking skill.

5.2.2 Result from individual semi-structured interviews:

ü Dual-lingual communication:
They all agreed with the idea of dual-lingual com-

We held a 30-minute individual semi-structured
interview with every member to obtain an insight of theirmunication can help them learn languages. Japanese students normally do not have chance to speak English muchfeeling during the time of using BiTak. The
open-questions related to dual-lingual communication andfunctions of BiTak.

and vice versa for foreign students so it has mutual benefits. They can gain some new words and correct the mistakes they usually make before. In their opinion, this kindv Group 1
ü Usability of BiTak
All users reported to be able to use BiTak easily
because they did not use any specific function. The fea-of communication may not be comfortable for chatting
but effective for learning languages.
ü Strict turn-taking
All group members

pointedoutthatstrictture of logging in without creating ID gave them the
comfort of access when they sometimes just want to join

turn-taking feature give them time to think carefully before raising their voice. They consequently have confi-

the chat immediately and do not have to care about thenuisance of making nicknames. The text-chat is highly

dence in expressing their ideas.
ü Recording linkevaluated because it is convenient for them to type any
words or sentences to make it more clear for the others to

One more interesting point the subjects found isrecording link. They all felt this feature is really importantunderstand.
ü Dual-lingual communication:
Although all the subjects found this kind of com-because they can listen again their friend’s presentation
all the time to recognize and correct mistake for each other.

munication weird and hard at first, they gradually recognized it really helps people from beginner to intermediate

In summary, dual-lingual pattern proves its efficiency in both groups. However, it is easily to find out the© 2017 Information Processing Society of Japan518

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difference in the performance of two groups. The communication in Group 1 is merely normal chatting; they do
not care much about others’ mistakes. It is alright as longas they understand then they gradually forget to correct
mistakes for each other. It is not good for language learning. Meanwhile, members in Group 2 took all of recording link into serious consideration. They want to makesure their friends know their mistake and willing to correct for them. All of them gradually have sense of learning, not simply gossiping on the account of the proposedfeatures of BiTak.

6. Conclusion
In this paper, we recommended a method of assessing the improvement of users of BiTak for second
language speaking. The learner’s progress is positively
evaluated by language teachers using a Rubric scoring
framework. Based on the experiments, it was suggested
that BiTak has changed the notion of users from an ordinary video chat application to a language supporting system thanks to its two prominent features: Strict
turn-taking and Recording function.
Due to limitation of time and effort, we recognizethat our observations come from a relatively small number of subjects. It is not appropriate to apply quantitative
analyses for small samples such as this. A more extensive
study would be needed for proving the solid efficiency of
all characteristics we have mentioned.
Acknowledgment
The authors greatly thank all subjects who cooperated to our experiments. Especially, we would like to express our gratitude to Prof. Shungo Kawanishi and Ms.

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Masako Tsutsui who dedicatedly took part in student
evaluation process. This work was supported by JSPS
KAKENHI Grant Number JP26280126.

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