OBSERVING PEDAGOGICAL PRACTICES THAT FACILITATE NEGOTIATION FOR MEANING IN L2 CLASSES

OUTLINE The problem and research question Interaction and negotiation for meaning (NfM) in the L2 classroom Methodology Results Discussion

The problem From the traditional to the interactive (communicative) classroom. Pedagogical practices (both student and teacher- centered) that favor interaction create an environment that facilitates acquisition. Studies (Allen & Carroll, 1988; Fazio & Lyster, 1998; Frölich, Spada & Allen, 1985) attempting to measure the communicative nature of classrooms found that it was not the quantity of interaction, but the quality of interaction that corresponded to improvement on proficiency tests. Negotiation for meaning (NfM) shown to facilitate acquisition

Research Question To what extent are the secondary school FSL and ESL instructors creating, through the choice of pedagogical practices, an environment favoring second language acquisition through discourse promoting the negotiation for meaning?

INTERACTION IN THE L2 CLASSROOM The nature of interaction: meaning is derived from context. SLA occurs within the locus of interplay between social and cognitive processes Interactionism in SLA. Three positions: Input, Output and Negotiation

NfM in SLA (Gass, 1997) Learners need modified input to build their linguistic systems. Many say it is necessary for SLA (Ellis, 2004; Gass, 2005; Long, 1996; Pica, 1996; Schmidt, 1990). –Input (forces semantic processing) –Noticing the gap (attentional processes) –Intake –Integration (hypotheses formation, testing, rejection, confirmation –Output (forces syntactic processing) Negotiation –Trigger, Indicator, Response, Reaction to response

Pedagogical practices that facilitate SLA Task types (Student-centered) –Convergent vs. Divergent Tasks: Duff (1986) Convergent tasks promoted twice as many negotiation moves than divergent tasks. –Optional vs. Required Information Exchange: Doughty & Pica (1986) observed a 122% increase in modified input with required information exchange tasks. –Two-way vs. One-way Tasks: Gass (2005) found that two-was tasks produced significantly more NfM in both the laboratory and natural classroom settings.

Pedagogical practices cont. Proleptic vs. Traditional teacher-centered instruction –Proleptic teaching: instruction through ‘responsive dialogue’ that assists students in hypothesis correction. –Identified by the six scaffolding function of Wood et al. (1976) 1) Recruitment. 2) Reduction in Degrees of Freedom. 3) Direction Maintenance. 4) Marking Critical Features. 5) Frustration Control. 6) Demonstration.

Example Proleptic Teaching The following is an outline of an episode of proleptic instruction illustrated in the Antón (1999) study. In an effort to teach the agreement of the past participle in a passé composé construction the instructor wrote several examples on the board. She then asked the student “what they noticed?” about the sentences. The nature of this question invited the entire class to participate (scaffolding function 1). As students provided their observations the instructor maintained their involvement confirming the observations while continuing to push the learners’ reflection (scaffolding functions 3 and 4): “Yes, the verb être is used. But, what else do you notice?” The instructor supported the students until one student noticed the ‘s’ at the end of the past participle and deduced that it agreed with the plural subject (scaffolding function 3). At this point the instructor explains, as confirmation of the hypothesis that was negotiated by the students, the grammatical rule concerning the use of être and the agreement of the participle (scaffolding function 6) (Antón, 1999). In this particular episode the teacher guided the students using questions that promote problem solving while they collectively negotiated the new grammatical rule. The interactional patterns in this episode, which can be characterized as NfM, stand in sharp contrast to her observations of an Italian class where the teacher used a deductive approach to grammar instruction.

Proleptic vs. traditional In her study of two classroom situation, Anton (1999) observed that the proleptic setting generated significantly more NfM.

Methodology Observed 64 hours of class time (8 teachers) Creation of the measurement instrument (observation grid with categories derived from the literature) Piloting the grid Coding (20% interrater agreement) Organizing data in an excell spread sheet

Results: Global distribution of class time

Distribution of time for student- centered activity

Teacher Centered Activity

Traditional vs. Proleptic

Synthesis: The Negotiation Index CAT.TASK TYPEMIN.% 4 Most favorable: Two-way in Pairs and Small Groups; Convergent One-way Task in Pairs Moderately Favorable: Two-Way Class; Convergent One-way in Small Groups and Class; Proleptic Teaching Not Very Favorable: Divergent One-Way Tasks; Individual Tasks with Questions Not Favorable: Class Business; Traditional Teaching; Individual Activities without the possibility to ask questions Negotiation Index

Negotiation Index for ESL and FSL CatTask TypesESL: %FSL: % 4Most Favorable 10.2 (183 mins) 2.8 (48 mins) 3Moderately Favorable 45.1 (808 mins) 48.9 (832 mins) 2Not Very Favorable 18.3 (327 mins) 29.9 (509 mins) 1Not Favorable 26.4 (473 mins) 18.3 (311 mins) Negotiation Index

Discussion Does a score of 2.38/4 indicate that there is room for improvement? Remember, a 1 or 4 would be unlikely. Why might ESL classes be slightly more interactive in nature? Almost twice as much time is being spent on student- centered work compared to previous studies. Does this indicate a trend of integration of communicative approaches in SL teaching? Why is so little time being spent on Most favorable tasks (two-way/in pairs)?

Discussion Does the dominance in proleptic teaching indicate that communicative approaches are being integrated into teaching? 50% of the class time was spent on activities considered not very/not favorable to negotiation. Much of this was individual seat work. Why might there be so much of this non-interactive work? What might be the benefits of individual work? Do you feel that teachers are aware of the merits of NfM?

Implications The results suggest that there is room for the integration of more two-way and convergent one-way tasks into the classes we observed. Perhaps: –Class management routines can become more efficient to free up more time for interactive work. –Less importance placed on individual and one-way divergent tasks –More importance on paired work. –Teachers and developers of pedagogical material should experiment with ways to modify one-way tasks so that they require an exchange of information.