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Online exchanges among learners are an important form of communication in language learning contexts. This is due to the affordances this medium of communication creates for learning as well as the growing interest in internationalization of curricula. In fact, online communication can foster connections between people, including learners, across the globe. This paper is based on a qualitative analysis of online chat communication between Canadian learners of German and German learners of English. We discuss how these learners negotiate closing sequences in their chats, considering that the patterns for closing sequences may be different in different languages or be culture-specific and learners need to make choices on a spectrum between business focus (i.e. staying on task) vs. personal focus (i.e. addressing personal information). Hence, learners must negotiate interactive patterns that they may not be familiar with in creative ways that establish and maintain interpersonal relationships. Research about online communication helps to better understand learner communication, especially in an international context. In addition, it helps raise language awareness for teacher training and provides impetus for sensitizing teachers and learners to the ways in which interaction works and how relationships are maintained in communication.

The goal of this article is to further our understanding of how learning opportunities are created in interactions. Based on a conversation analysis of peer interactions of foreign language learners, we investigate how the negotiation of expert positions among these learners affects this process. The focus of the analysis is on the relationship between the conversation analytic notion of "doing-being-an-expert" and learning in the context of word searches. We challenge the fixed notions of expert and novice and highlight the roles of interpersonal context, tools, and positioning in the negotiation of expertise. Drawing on the socio-interactionist notion of situating learning in interaction, we argue that there is a link between the negotiation of expert positions and opportunities for learning. (Contains 8 notes.)

The development of both the materials for an intermediate-level hybrid German writing course and the software in a virtual learning environment for the course may be viewed as activity systems. Viewing the individual components of each system as interrelated enables us to conceptualize the complexities of the development process, which goes well beyond traditional software documentation. (Contains 1 table.)

This article is republished from "The Canadian Modern Language Review," 60, 4, pp. 501-526. It is published as an article exchange between the "MLJ" and the "CMLR." The articles for the exchange were selected by committees from the Editorial Board of each journal according to the following criteria: articles of particular relevance to international readers, especially those in the United States and Canada; and articles that are likely to provoke scholarly discussion among readers of the journal of their republication. The "MLJ" thanks Keiko Koda, chair, Michael Everson, Lourdes Ortega, and Ross Steele for their work selecting this "CMLR" article for republication in the "MLJ." The "MLJ" article to appear in the "CMLR," 61, 5, is: "Second Language Acquisition as Situated Practice: Task Accomplishment in the French Second Language Classroom," by Lorenza Mondada and Simona Pekarek Doehler ("MLJ," 88, 2004, pp. 501-518). The Editors of both journals hope their readers will find this sharing of scholarship interesting and beneficial. Using a framework based on conversation analysis (Auer, 1984, 1995, 1998), this article presents an analysis of learner code-switching between first language (L1) and second language (L2) in an advanced foreign language (FL) classroom. It was found that students code-switch not only as a fallback method when their knowledge of the L2 fails them, or for other participant-related functions, but also for discourse-related functions that contexualize the interactional meaning of their utterances. These uses strikingly resemble code-switching patterns in non-classroom bilingual settings and show that language learners are able to conceptualize the classroom as a bilingual space. Learners orient to the classroom as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) through their code-switching patterns as manifestations of a shared understanding about their actions and about themselves as members of that community.

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In a previous paper (Liebscher and Dailey-O'Cain, Dialect use and discursive identities of migrants from the west in eastern Germany, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), we posited that attitudes toward language are not merely static thoughts in people's minds, but are constantly constructed in interaction. Following on this work, in this paper we investigate the ways in which German-speaking migrants and their descendants in urban Canada use language attitudes in interaction to construct a specifically German space within Canada. Our focus is on their attitudes toward each of the various languages and language varieties present in the participants' linguascape: German dialects, standard German and English, and code-mixing, and in our analysis, we observe the ways that these migrants negotiate who has authority over these forms, as well as how attitudes can shift when speakers' connection to their country of origin is interrupted through migration. Though the direct focus of the research questions we address in this paper is on what it means to be German in urban Canada, we also address broader issues of how urban minority groups construct and maintain minority identities after migration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates forms of address, in particular the T/V distinction in German, in conversational interviews with German-speaking immigrants to English-speaking Canada and their descendants. From among 77 interviews conducted in two urban areas in Canada, we discuss instances of both the interactional use of and metalinguistic comments on forms of address. Our analysis is largely guided by conversation analysis and interactional sociolinguistics (e.g. Goodwin & Heritage 1990). Using Clyne, Norrby and Warren's (2009) model of address as a backdrop, we investigate the construction of group identity and group socialization through the lens of positioning theory (e.g. van Langenhove and Harré 1993; Dailey-O'Cain and Liebscher 2009). This combination of analytical tools can explain shifts in both usage of and attitudes toward the T/V distinction that cannot be explained through language attrition arguments alone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Groundwater contamination of the Abbotsford aquifer by 1,2-dichloropropane (1,2-DCP) was reported previously. The purpose of the present study is to quantify groundwater contamination by other chlorinated hydrocarbon compounds which are present in fumigant formulations containing 1,2-DCP. Widespread contamination of 1,2,2-trichloropropane (1,2,2-TCP) was measured consistent with a non-point source. 1,2,2-TCP concentration generally decreased with depth suggesting a surface source. Localized contamination by 1,2,3-trichloropropane, 2,3-dichloropropene and 1,3-dichloropropane was detected. Detection of these compounds was associated with higher concentrations of 1,2-DCP suggesting contamination by these compounds may have been from the same fumigant sources. The lack of a decrease in the concentration of most of thesecompounds over time suggests that the measured contamination will persist for some time. The results highlight the potential for persistent trace impurities in chlorinated fumigant formulations to contaminate groundwater in vulnerable aquifers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]