April 2012 Volume 15 Number 2 - Educational Technology & Society

么?为什么?为什么?啊? (Fang Jie)? Why? Why? Why? Ah?” Phoebe asked.
Here the noun white eyes was misused as a verb.
2-11 Lucy Ah! 因为他们是到外地工作,才 “Ah! Because they work in other places, when they go
回来。而且又很老了。
back home, they have been too old.” Lucy was getting a
little bit impatient.
2-12 Phoebe 可是,为什么会白眼她啊? “But, why do they (Fang Jie’s relatives) ‘white eyes’ her
(Fang Jie)?” Phoebe insisted. She still could not get the
interrelationship between the old and white eyes.
2-13 Lucy Ok, 老师我想问你故事的一个东 It seemed Lucy did not know how to further explain.
西啊。为什么会受到人家的白 She asked teacher’s help, “Teacher, I have a question
眼?
about the story. Why does she get white eyes from
others?” Here white eyes was used correctly in Chinese.
* “白眼” is literally translated as “white eyes” here. In English its exact meaning is “roll the eyes,” while in the
following excerpts, we translate it as “get a stare.” As “stare” in English is often used as verb, its corresponding
Chinese word “白眼” is used incorrectly in students’ discussion.
From the code 2-1 to 2-9, Lucy followed Phoebe’s question to interpret the sentence step by step. As they discuss
further details, they use language inappropriately (code 2-10). As shown in episode 2, Lucy answered Phoebe’s
question patiently (code 2-11), but Phoebe still thought Lucy did not answer the key of the question (code 2-13).
Lucy had to ask the teacher for help. Like Lucy told Phoebe (code 2-11), the teacher mentioned to students to pay
attention to the paragraph that “Fang Jie has been old,” but Phoebe still could not understand. She asked, “Is there
anything wrong to go back home when she is old?” The teacher reminded her Fang Jie was not married so she had
no child and nobody could take care of her. In this way, Phoebe seemed struck by this new awareness, and Lucy
nodded her head many times in agreement as well.
They afterwards planned to post this question for the partner group to answer. While they were organizing and
choosing words for constructing the question, Lucy corrected the use of “白眼” for her group members, and finally
they posted their question “为什么芳姐会遭到亲人的白眼?(Why does she get white eyes from others?).” At
the last stage of the activity, when the teacher asked each group to post the hardest question onto the class public
board (see Figure 6), group 10 posted this question and explained the answer in front of the class.
Figure 6. Public board for the whole class in the reading comprehension activity
On the basis of the collective cognition through intra-group negotiation, inter-group discussion and the whole class
level sharing, we distill the pattern of symmetric knowledge advancement being enacted. This lesson scenario shows
that the success of symmetric knowledge advancement depends very much on the pattern of improvable ideas.
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