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A Classroom Perspective On The Negotiation of Mean PDF
A Classroom Perspective On The Negotiation of Mean PDF
A Classroom Perspective On The Negotiation of Mean PDF
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INTRODUCTION
Small group work in EFL classrooms is a widespread practice, enthusiastically
endorsed in much of the literature It is seen as beneficial m several ways it
increases the amount of class time available to an individual student to
practise speaking the target language, it decreases the amount of time students
spend listening {or not listening) to other class members interacting with the
teacher, it avoids the anxiety and self-consciousness that prevent some
students from speaking up in front of the whole class, it allows the teacher
more opportunity for individual instruction In sum, it can help to create a
positive and relaxed learning environment (See Long 1977 for a full
discussion ) Investigation of the language produced by small groups has
2 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
tended to justify these hopes It has been found, for example, that when
interacting in small groups students talk more than they do in teacher-fronted
activities (Pica and Doughty 1985), that they do not talk less accurately or
carefully (Porter 1983), and that they have the opportunity to practise a
greater variety of speech acts (Long et al 1976)
Other research has focused on whether students working in dyads or groups
can provide each other with the Comprehensible Input (Krashen 1981, 1982)
that has been claimed to be a cruaal element in second language acquisition
(SLA) For Krashen, SLA proceeds by learners understanding target language
input (Y) that contains some forms just a little beyond their present scope
('i+l') and which are therefore, according to the natural order of SLA, 'due' to
be acquired next When learners successfully comprehend the meaning of
language that has examples of new linguistic matenal, their interlanguage has
necessarily advanced In considenng how learners manage to understand the
meaning of language whose forms they have not yet acquired. Long (1985)
concludes that general knowledge, knowledge of the context, and the ability
to interpret extra-linguistic clues all play a role, but the most important way
learners make input comprehensible is by interactional adjustments, I e
requesting the interlocutor to clanfy problem utterances and thus render
them comprehensible In this way, successful communication is assured and
the learner gets exposure to new target language forms Empirical studies by
Varonis and Gass (1985), Gass and Varonis (1985), and Doughty and Pica
(1986) have suggested that non-native speakers (NNSs) do indeed use
interactional adjustments to generate a supply of Comprehensible Input
When confronted with a gap in understanding, they signal the problem and
request clarification from their interlocutor, who then obliges with a
repetition, elaboration or simplification of the onginal utterance
A This is your 2 term7
B Pardon me7
-> A 2 term, this is this term is term your 2 term
C Yeah, How long will you be7 Will you be staying7
D / will be four months
C four months7
-* D until April stay four months here
E You know heating7
F So it is a heat exchanger
~* E radiator
(Examples from Varonis and Gass 1985 77)
The results of studies of 'negotiation for meaning' indicate that it is more
likely to occur in groups of NNSs than in teacher-led classes (Rulon and
McCreary 1986, Doughty and Pica 1986) especially if the speakers are from
different language backgrounds (Varonis and Gass 1985) If these speakers are
engaged upon a task that obliges them to exchange information, then the
PAUUNE FOSTER 3
either volunteered their time, or who had been 'lent' by their teacher How
far the performance of NNSs under research conditions reflects their
performance in the classroom is therefore largely unknown Although it
should be self-evident that performance in one set of circumstances cannot
predict with any confidence performance in a different set of circumstances,
the studies mentioned above (and many others in the field) do not consider
the setting of the research to be a significant intervening vanable Indeed, if
context is mentioned at all in the description of the research, it usually
commands no more than a few lines In wholly experimental studies we may
only be told that subjects were audiotaped, but not where or how When
established ESL classes are used we may be told that the researchers were
not present dunng audiotaping, but no information is given on how far the
normal class procedures were followed (Rulon and McCreary 1986 are
unusual in stressing that they wished to avoid unnecessarily disturbing the
classes they were studying, but they state without comment that they asked
the groups they were recording to go into separate rooms ) That language
performance is vanable and can be affected by self-consciousness and levels
of formality is well established in LI sociohnguistic research (see, most
famously, Labov 1972, and Trudgill 1983) There is also an impressive body
of L2 research suggesting that the degree to which learners are able to
carefully monitor their L2 production has an affect upon the phonology
(Dickerson 1975, Schmidt 1977) and also the grammar (Schmidt 1980) For
Tarone (1983) the learner has a whole range of interlanguage styles and,
depending on the task he is given to do, can select from the vernacular (in
which no conscious attention is paid to speech) to the careful (in which
grammatical and phonological judgements are consciously made) There is
no reason therefore to suppose that the style adopted by learners in an
undisturbed classroom will be the same as that adopted by learners in an
experimental set-up (who may be all too aware that their language is being
recorded for analysis)
The penis of ignonng the possible influence the setting may exert on
student performance have been pointed out before As long ago as 1974
Jacobovits and Gordon were arguing strongly that research findings cannot be
allowed to guide educational practice if they are based on abstraction and
investigation under controlled conditions For them what really matters about
any new idea or theory of language learning is not what the researcher might
find out about it, but what the student in the classroom does with it (p 90)
Van Lier (1988) and Nunan (1991) have repeated these warnings, but
without much impact on research methodology Nevertheless, it is clear that
SLA research has to be willing to move into the environment of an
undisturbed, intact classroom, and not confine itself exclusively to places
organized for or disrupted by a research expenment
PAULINE FOSTER 5
The subjects
These were part-time students in the same intermediate level class at a large
municipal college, meeting three times a week for two hours They came from
a wide vanety of LI backgrounds (e g Korean, Spanish, Arabic, French) and
from a wide age range (17 to 41), with an average age of 21 They had been
assigned to the intermediate level on the basis of a written test and a short
interview At the time of data gathenng, the class had been running for more
than two months, and any student of inappropriately high or low proficiency
had already been transferred to a more suitable level The subjects can be seen
as highly typical of the very large number of part-time learners of English in
colleges throughout Britain
Twenty-one students from the class were observed in this study All but two
were female Each student is identified in the tables of results by mitial(s)
Some were observed for all four of the tasks, but, because of erratic
attendance or poor quality recordings, most were not Consequently, robust
cross-task comparisons of results are not possible except in so far as the
6 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
The setting
As far as possible the setting of a 'real classroom' was preserved All
recordings were made dunng four scheduled lessons The teacher acted as
researcher, avoiding the need for the presence of a stranger in the classroom
On each of the data gathering occasions the students were asked to do one
task which was presented as part of the normal class routine, and which was
selected from the text books used throughout the course The students did
the tasks all at the same time and in the same room, as is normal classroom
practice
The tasks
Four tasks were chosen for this study Two were done by the students
working in dyads, and two by the students working in small groups of four or
five All of the tasks chosen for analysis in this study came from books
designed to be used in a 'communicative' classroom Two of the tasks could
only be done if the participants shared individually-held information These
are here described as required information exchange tasks The other two
tasks provided the same information to all participants They are described as
optional information exchange tasks For the dyadic set-up, the tasks recorded
were as follows
1 A grammar-based task Students were required to compose questions that
would elicit the given answers The dyads had to compose a suitable
interrogative (For example, to the given answer, 'I see him once or twice a
week', the students would need to formulate a question such as, 'How often
do you see him 7 ') As there was no obligation to exchange information, this
task is classified as an optional information exchange {Task taken from Soars
and Soars 1987 )
2 Picture differences Each member of the dyads was given either sheet A or B
of a photocopy of 20 small line drawings Some of these drawings were
identical on both sheets, others had slight differences Without showing each
other their versions, the students had to establish which drawings were the
same and which were different This could only be done by students sharing
information, and is classified as a required information exchange (Task taken
from Klrppel 1984 )
For the small group set-up the tasks recorded were as follows
3 Consensus This was a discussion task in which students were set a problem
(I e they are made redundant) and given several possible courses of action
Once they had reached a consensus on which course to follow, they received
PAULINE FOSTER 7
Data collection
Recordings were made at weekly intervals during scheduled classes The tasks
were all done as part of a normal lesson plan and were not presented as being in
any way 'special' The students knew that they were being recorded, but in
order to minimize any self-consciousness or anxiety they were not asked to
hold a microphone or to speak deliberately in the direction of the tape recorder
It was hoped that the recordings would thereby capture the students' most
'normal' group work interaction This had a cost, however Two tapes had to be
discarded because much of the interaction was inaudible Two further tapes
could not be used because students had not properly attempted the task (l e
they had showed each other their photocopies in Task 2) Also discarded was
one tape that had recorded only two and a half minutes of interaction before
the students declared the task finished There remained three recordings for
each task dyad Tasks I and 2 thus have six subjects each, and group Tasks 3 and
4 have 14 subjects each (As we have noted above, the same subjects do not
necessarily appear across all four of the tasks) For Tasks 1, 2, and 3 the first five
minutes of interaction was transcribed and coded For Task 4, in which a lot of
information had to be exchanged, the initial ten minutes of interaction was
transcribed and coded in order to give all the group members time to
contribute These scores were then halved to enable comparisons to be made
Language production
C-units were calculated to measure the amount of language produced by each
dyad and group and are shown in Table 1 Apart from task 3, which shows all
PAULINE FOSTER 9
of the groups producing c-units to roughly the same degree, the dyads and
groups have a very wide range of scores, for example, whereas for the picture
differences task dyad 2b produced 138 c-units, dyad 2a produced only 59, for
the map task group 4b produced 84 c-units, but group 4a only 38 Although
the required information exchange task for all the dyads consistently resulted
m more c-umts than the optional information exchange task, the opposite
was true for two of the groups where the requirement to exchange
information is associated with less language being produced
It is revealing to examine student performance at the individual level
Table 2 shows that group 3b shared the interaction fairly between them (with
Task 3 I V Ig J F C Su Ah E A V S Y Ar
(optional informa- 48 25 8 10 25 26 35 30 1 29 35 0 7 1
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R o S V S u T
(required informa- 17 10 10 1 0 37 15 17 15 27 4 23 20 0
tion exchange)
10 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
student E as a notable exception) but in all the other groups one or two of the
students were dominant, with the other members remaining either quiet or
totally silent Students E, S, and Ar contributed little or nothing to task 3
Students K, T, S, and Al contributed little or nothing to task 4 even though it
required them to share information with their partners All were known to be
extremely quiet in the whole-class setting This suggests that the claim of
Doughty and Pica (1986 321) that a required information exchange task can
'compel' students to speak is overconfident, at least as far as small-group work
is concerned
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 17 16 40 48 30 10
tion exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 32 27 92 46 28 56
tion exchange)
Comprehensible Input
Negotiation of meaning was measured by determining the number of
negotiation moves (comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and
clarification requests) made by each dyad and group The scores for these
variables are shown in Table 4 The most negotiation moves {15 9% of c-
units) were produced by dyad lb doing an optional information exchange
task The least (0%) were produced by dyad la doing the same task
Similarly, the second highest score for negotiation moves (13 7%) was for
12 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
la lb lc
Dyad Task 1 0 0 14 15 9 2
(optional information
exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Group Task 3 2 22 16 1 3 7 3 41
(optional information
exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Group Task 4 3 79 9 10 7 7 95
{required information
exchange
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 0 0 9 5 2 0
tion exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 5 3 14 2 3 4
tion exchange)
that the majority of students were not overtly engaged in negotiating meaning
to any significant extent Of the 40 scores presented, only 6 are for more than
4 negotiation moves Twenty-six are for 2 or fewer negotiation moves There
are 16 zeros, almost all of which are from the group tasks
Presumably the students in the groups (if they were properly attending to
the discussion) were content to receive the comprehensible input generated
by someone else's negotiating (Similarly, Low Input Generators (Sehger
1983) used High Input Generators in a parasitic fashion ) In 3c, 4b, and 4c,
one student only took an active negotiating role, the others remained more
or less passive Perhaps they understood the discourse without the need to
check or clarify anything (After all, language can be syntactically very
deviant and yet still comprehensible ) Or perhaps they were not sufficiently
Task 3 I V I g J F C S u A h E A V S Y A r
(optional informa- 0 2 0 0 3 4 4 5 0 0 3 0 0 0
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R o S V S u T
(required informa- 1 2 0 0 0 1 1 6 1 4 0 2 1 0
tion exchange)
14 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
Modified O u t p u t
The incidence of modified output (l e utterances that were morphologically,
semantically, syntactically, or phonologically altered in response to a
negotiation move) was calculated for each dyad and group Individual
scores were also calculated This data is shown in Tables 7, 8, and 9 Most
modification moves were made by dyad lb doing a task that required
agreement on an appropriate and correct interrogative, but Table 7 shows the
other two dyads doing this task managing only one example between them
Interestingly, for each task type one dyad or group (l e lb and 2a) produced
far more modified output than the others, whose scores are very low and
within a very narrow range, 0% to 2 8% of total c-units A comparison of
Table 7 with Table 4 reveals that the (comparatively) high levels of modified
output for dyads lb and 2a might have been foreseen, as these dyads
produced (comparatively) high levels of negotiation moves The same
companson, however, would have predicted much more modified output
for group 3b than it actually achieved (3b is the second highest producer of
negotiation moves, but the third lowest producer of modified output) The
dyads in general show more modified output than the groups
The most notable feature of Tables 8 and 9 are the numerous zeros Of the
40 scores presented, 28 are for 0, and a further 8 are for only 1 By far the
highest incidence of zeros occurs in the group tasks The data reported by Pica
ex al (1989) shows that their 10 NSs made a total of 327 negotiation moves
dunng the three tasks they were set, and that the 10 NNS interlocutors made
327 responses, of which an impressive 116 were modified Although Pica et al
PAULINE FOSTER 15
la lb lc
Dyad Task 1 0 0 7 79 1 2 5
(optional information
exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Dyad Task 2 3 51 3 22 1 12
(required information
exchange)
3a 3b 3c
Group Task 3 0 0 1 0 8 2 2 8
(optional information
exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Group Task 4 1 2 6 0 0 1 1 3
(required information
exchange)
could conclude from their study that modified output is 'alive and well' in
NNS/NS interaction, whether it was alive and well in the present classroom
study is made clear in Tables 7, 8, and 9 In response to the total of 87
negotiation moves, modified responses occurred only 20 times, and 13 of
these were produced by three dyads In the remaining nine groupings,
modified output occurs hardly at all
What, we may ask, happened to the 67 negotiation moves that did not
receive a modified response7 Thirty received unmodified repetitions of the
problem utterance, or else a simple yes/no response The remainder, 37 moves
in all, did not receive a verbal response Audiotapes cannot help us
understand why these checks and requests seem to go unanswered They
may have been ignored or unheard, or given a non-verbal response, or
perhaps the speaker did not wait for an answer
A 'the sports field, swimming poo! and equipment may be used free of charge '
B Free of charge? What is that?
C (laughs) Yes
A sports day
16 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
A There is this one, this one, and after to camping site near Oldfield
B Oldfield?
C Anyway, the best thing I think is er camping
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 0 0 2 5 0 1
tion exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 1 2 0 3 1 0
tion exchange)
Task 3 I V I g J F C S A h E A V S Y A r
(optional informa- 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R S V S u T
(required informa- 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
tion exchange)
PAULINE FOSTER 17
them not to pay close attention to the form of their language In the study
conducted by Pica et al (1989) the NNSs were in an experimental context
rather than an informal classroom and perhaps more focused on the task and
its successful completion, they were in dyads where it is harder to ignore
questions Most important of all, however, could be the fact that the NNSs
were interacting with NSs and would therefore have felt an inequality of
status regarding the language Any communication problem affecting the
smooth completion of a task may have been felt by the NNSs to be their fault
and their responsibility to repair They may, in short, have felt more 'pushed'
to make their language comprehensible That the students in the present
study did not feel pushed into modifying their language is clear from the
frequency with which they passed over chances to do so The responsibility
for a breakdown in communication between NNSs is a shared one, as Gass
and Varonis (1985) have pointed out, because speaker and hearer(s) share an
incompetence in the language But this, rather than encouraging unembar-
rassed negotiation for meaning routines, could have the effect of discouraging
NNSs from the difficult and potentially frustrating task of modifying their
language in order to make it comprehensible A NNS, deciding that a
breakdown in communication is the fault of his NNS interlocutor, might not
feel obliged to attempt a repair
We have noted that of the total of 87 negotiation moves, 37 received no
response, 30 prompted unmodified repetition or simple yes/no answers, and
only 20 prompted modified responses Of these 20, only five were modified
syntactically and only two morphologically The most common modification
was semantic, in which students paraphrased "problem utterances or else
substituted a different word This occurred 11 times The remaining two
modifications were phonological In Swain's (1985) account of the need for
second language learners to produce Comprehensible Output it is the
manipulation of the syntax of the target language which is considered most
important to SLA Whereas the results achieved by Pica et al (1989) show
quite high levels of morphosyntactic modification, the students in the present
study were far less likely to try to modify their syntax In fact, in a total of 918
c-units this happens only five times
examples used in the studies cited by Swain, all of which would be familiar to
a classroom teacher Nevertheless, the fact that in this present study the other
two dyads doing the grammar-based Task 1 produced next to nothing in the
way of modified output should remind us that teachers can create
opportunities for modified output, not ensure that they will be taken
This paper has argued that some current claims in Second Language
Acquisition research are of academic rather than practical interest because the
researchers have lost sight of the world inhabited by language teachers and
learners If language acquisition research wants to feed into teaching
methodology, the research environment has to be willing to move out of
the laboratory and into the classroom This means that researchers need more
than a good understanding of research methodology and SLA theory They
need the skills and expenence of an EFL teacher in order to be able to design
and implement worthwhile classroom studies without disrupting the class or
compromising the data They also need the judgement of an EFL practitioner
to inform their interpretation of the results and any practical applications they
might draw from them Because teacher-researchers are best placed to
identify and analyse individual voices on audiotape they can gather and use
a wider range of data than that available to experimental researchers who
measure scores for groups or dyads rather than for individuals As this study
has illustrated, individual learners may behave very differently dunng group
tasks and so group statistics are an unsatisfactory basis for research
conclusions All of these points are important considerations for future
research, and would help to ensure that findings are more robust, more
generahzable and, ultimately, more useful
(Revised version received April 1997)
NOTE
I The author would like to thank Professor Peter Skehan and four anonymous reviewers for their
very helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper
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