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 teachercentered) 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
11%
StudentCentered
Activity
44%
45%
TeacherCentered
Activity
Down Time
Distribution of time for studentcentered activity
8%
34%
Individual
Activity
One-Way
Activity
Two-Way
Activity
58%
Teacher Centered Activity
36%
Teaching
64%
Class
Business
Traditional vs. Proleptic
13%
Traditional
Proleptic
87%
Synthesis: The Negotiation Index
CAT.
TASK TYPE
MIN.
4
Most favorable: Two-way in Pairs and Small
Groups; Convergent One-way Task in Pairs
231 6.6
3
Moderately Favorable: Two-Way Class;
Convergent One-way in Small Groups and
Class; Proleptic Teaching
1640 47
2
Not Very Favorable: Divergent One-Way
Tasks; Individual Tasks with Questions.
836 23.9
1
Not Favorable: Class Business; Traditional
Teaching; Individual Activities without the
possibility to ask questions.
784 22.5
2.38 Negotiation Index
%
Negotiation Index for ESL and FSL
Cat
4
3
2
1
Task Types
ESL: %
FSL: %
Most Favorable
10.2
(183 mins)
2.8
(48 mins)
Moderately Favorable
45.1
(808 mins)
48.9
(832 mins)
Not Very Favorable
18.3
(327 mins)
29.9
(509 mins)
Not Favorable
26.4
(473 mins)
18.3
(311 mins)
Negotiation Index
2.39
2.36
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 studentcentered 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.