Abstract
Child peer interaction in English as a foreign language (EFL) settings has recently received increasing attention with respect to age, instruction type and first language (L1) use, but longitudinal studies remain scarce and the effects of proficiency pairing and language choice on meaning negotiation strategies are still rather unexplored. Within a primary school EFL context, this paper aims to explore the amount and types of meaning negotiation, and the effects of time, proficiency pairing and language choice in a spot-the-differences task. Forty Catalan/Spanish bilingual children were paired into mixed and matched proficiency dyads, and their oral production was analyzed twice over the course of two years (i.e., 9-10 and 11-12 years old). The analysis included conversational adjustments, self- and other-repetition and positive and negative feedback in the learners’ L1 and second language (L2). Our data show that the amount of meaning negotiation is low, although L2 meaning negotiation is higher than L1 meaning negotiation, and all the strategies are present in the data except for comprehension checks. Time effects are hardly observed. However, proficiency pairing and language effects are more generally found, whereby mixed proficiency dyads tend to negotiate for meaning more than matched dyads and meaning negotiation instances are more frequent in the L2 than in the L1.
Highlights
There is currently little doubt that interactional processes push the development of learners’ second or foreign language (L2) both in symmetrical and in asymmetrical interaction (Gass & Mackey, 2006; Long, 1996; Mackey, 2007; Philp, Adams, & Iwashita, 2014; Sato & Ballinger, 2016, among others), some may question the extent to which these processes are fostered in foreign language (FL) peer interaction
Our research questions addressed the amount of L2 and L1 meaning negotiation used by primary school English as a foreign language (EFL) learners, the most frequently used types of meaning negotiation in each language and the effects of time, proficiency pairing and language on them together with potential interactions between the factors during task-based peer interaction
This study has explored the amount of negotiation of meaning (NoM), repetition and feedback produced by EFL young learners in task-based peer interaction and the mediating effect of time, proficiency pairing and the choice of the language of interaction
Summary
There is currently little doubt that interactional processes push the development of learners’ second or foreign language (L2) both in symmetrical (i.e., learner-learner or peer) and in asymmetrical (i.e., native speaker/teacherlearner) interaction (Gass & Mackey, 2006; Long, 1996; Mackey, 2007; Philp, Adams, & Iwashita, 2014; Sato & Ballinger, 2016, among others), some may question the extent to which these processes are fostered in foreign language (FL) peer interaction. FL learners are not limited in negotiating for meaning in communicative tasks (Gass, Mackey, & Ross-Feldman, 2005) and are capable of reflecting on the adequacy of L2 forms, correctly solving language-related episodes and assisting each other in producing L2 utterances beyond what they would be individually able to produce (Alegría de la Colina & García Mayo, 2007; Ohta, 2000, 2001). At low proficiency levels, negotiation of meaning and reflection on L2 form in FL peer interaction often take place in the learners’ first language (L1), which plays an instrumental role in task completion (Alegría de la Colina & García Mayo, 2009; DiCamilla & Antón, 2012; Vraciu & Pladevall-Ballester, 2020)
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