Negotiation of Outcome and Negotiation of Meaning in ESL Classroom Interaction

Abstract

i In recent years, a growing number of researchers concerned with first and second language acquisition have indicated that negotiation in interactions between a language learner and a proficient speaker of the language plays a significant role in promoting language acquisition. Since, however, this area of research is a relatively new one, some of the key terms and concepts involved are used in different senses by different authors, and, so far, there has been little indication of how this research could be of use to classroom teachers. The present study was therefore carried out in an attempt 1) to operationalize the concept of negotiation in the context of an ESL classroom, and 2) to investigate which types of classroom activity foster negotiation. One 30-minute ESL lesson taught by a native English-speaking (NS) teacher to a class of 30 non-native English-speaking (NNS) children, between the ages of 11 and 13 and in the first year of an ESL program in an elementary school in Philadelphia, was recorded and analyzed according to the model of classroom discourse proposed by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). Two 10-minute segments of the lesson involving, respectively, display and open-ended questioning by the teacher based on a reading text were examined in detail according to a number of criteria for negotiation suggested by Long (1983), Hatch (1983), and Wells (1981). According to Long, criteria for negotiation include use by the NS of confirmation checks, comprehension checks, clarification requests, repetitions, and marking of new topics. Hatch's distinction between the NNS's canned as opposed to creative speech, which she terms true negotiation, was operationalized in this study as the production by both NS and NNS of utterances containing information known to only one party. Wells' criteria for determining which negotiations in interactions occurring between mothers and their pre-school children will lead to faster language development include encouragement by the mother of initiations by the child. This was