Moderation Matters: Measuring Conversational Moderation Impact in English as a Second Language Group Discussion
Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers often struggle to engage in group discussions due to language barriers.While moderators can facilitate participation, few studies assess conversational engagement and evaluate moderation effectiveness.To address this gap, we develop a dataset comprising 17 sessions from an online ESL conversation club, which includes both moderated and non-moderated discussions.We then introduce an approach that integrates automatic ESL dialogue assessment and a framework that categorizes moderation strategies.Our findings indicate that moderators help improve the flow of topics and start/end a conversation.Interestingly, we find active acknowledgement and encouragement to be the most effective moderation strategy, while excessive information and opinion sharing by moderators has a negative impact.Ultimately, our study paves the way for analyzing ESL group discussions and the role of moderators in non-native conversation settings.Code and data are available at https: //github.com/RenaGao/L2Moderator. * Equal contribution.John: "One of my cultural shock was when one of my Kiwi friend greeted me with Hongi.I later realised this is how people show respect in New Zealand."Kevin: "Hongi is a traditional Māori greeting, where two people press their noses together, meaning sharing of breath (Information Sharing).How about you Amy? Have you encountered any cultural shock in UK?(Information Probing)" Amy: "Um......I was not quite used to their food.Too much potatoes for me.
Authors: Rena Gao, Ming-Bin Chen, Lea Frermann, Jey Han Lau
Institution: The University of Melbourne
Language: English
Topic: Speech and dialogue systems
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Funder: Australian Research Council
OpenAlex ID: W4412888802