Non-native Speaker Interaction : Does it constitute a good learning situation for pupils studying English as a foreign language?

• Main Author: Sköldvall, Henning
• Format: Others
• Language: English
• Published: Stockholms universitet, Institutionen för språkdidaktik 2015
• Subjects: non-native; interaction; interlanguage; negotiation; repair; Specific Languages; Studier av enskilda språk; Humanities and the Arts; Humaniora och konst
• Online Access: http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-118887

Proponents of communicative language teaching in foreign language classrooms assume that the learners will profit from interacting in the target language on meaningful topics. The present study investigated whether non-native speaker interaction constitutes a good learning situation. Four research questions were posed: how pupils deal with breakdowns in communication, if they use any strategies to avoid problems, if they collaborate and negotiate for meaning and consequently if open-ended conversations among learners promote language development. Pupils in a Swedish secondary school were recorded interacting in the target language and conversation analysis was used to examine the data. It was found that there was a common structure to the way that the pupils dealt with problems, a few strategies were used and the pupils also collaborated. However, the conversations lacked some of the characteristics of interaction between native and non-native speakers that research have shown to be conducive to language development. Also, almost no negotiation of meaning was observed. Based on these results it is argued that non-native speaker interaction constitutes a good learning situation but probably needs to be accompanied by more explicit instruction.