What do students learn from interaction?
- Certain types of learning activities, especially group activities where students need to exchange information with each other, promote a lot of interaction and negotiation.
- Effective interactive discussion and negotiation leads to noticing , hypothesis testing , and metatalk .
- When students are noticing language, testing their hypotheses about language forms, and engaging in metatalk, their language learning is enhanced.
- Reconstructing a strip story is one activity of this kind that bilingual Pasifika students can do in their Pasifika languages as well as in English.
How to organise groups for best language-learning opportunities
Most teachers understand the value of collaborative work in classrooms and plan for their students to work in pairs and groups. Students come to understand and extend the concepts they need for their curriculum learning as they interact with each other and negotiate new learning. Different learning activities have different purposes – for example, activities in which students are asked to share different points of view or to reach a consensus help them come to grips with a range of perspectives on a particular topic or concept. Such activities can also support students’ language learning.
If you want your students to engage in negotiation and interaction that promotes language learning, there are particular ways that you can structure their learning tasks. Teachers are familiar with the use of the terms ‘task’ and ‘learning task’ to describe any piece of work a teacher assigns to students to advance their learning. In the context of language learning and teaching, Ellis (2000) defines the word ‘task’ in a more specific way, to describe a learning activity in which learners use the language they are learning for real communication. In the LEAP resource, a ‘task’ in Ellis’s sense is called a ‘language-learning task’.
Ellis describes a task as an activity that:
- requires the learners to focus primarily on meaning
- has some kind of gap that the learners can close by communicating
- requires learners to construct their own productive language rather than to manipulate language that the teacher provides
- has a clearly defined outcome (other than producing ‘correct’ language).
- Engaging learners in tasks that focus them on creating meaning for an authentic purpose enables them to acquire language. It also gives them opportunities to develop fluency and is intrinsically motivating.
(Ministry of Education, 2006, page 4.)
Ellis (2000, page 200; 2003, pages 95–100) lists the types of language-learning tasks that result in the most negotiation and interaction among students.
These include tasks that:
- require an exchange of information , in other words they require participation (one person gives information to another)
- require a two-way exchange of information in which both or all participants must contribute and gain information (see the examples of split information activities in Investigation B and in the associated material Split information: primary maths and Split information: secondary science )
- have a closed outcome (see the glossary – note that in the language-learning term ‘closed outcome’, the word ‘outcome’ does not necessarily mean a learning outcome based on an achievement objective)
- are new types of activity for the students
- include detailed information and not much contextual support (for example, from pictures)
- involve familiar topics and familiar partners.
See also:
- the video clip Group work , which looks at setting up the arrangements for peers to interact with each other
- the associated material Characteristics of language-learning tasks , which looks at ways of structuring language-learning tasks to promote particular aspects of language
- Ellis, R . (2005).
Jigsaw activities (which involve a particular kind of co-operative learning – refer to Ministry of Education, 2004, pages 122–125) offer one way of creating the conditions that lead to interactions that are helpful for language learning. Jigsaw activities can be short, discrete activities, or they can provide a way of structuring all the learning that is taking place around a particular topic or unit of work. Jigsaw Classroom describes ways jigsaw learning can be organised and some learning outcomes that can result from it.
How interaction aids learning
Interaction offers EAL students particular conditions that will help them to learn the English language more effectively.
The eighth of Ellis’s principles of successful language instruction states that “the opportunity to interact in the target language is central to developing proficiency” (Ministry of Education, 2006, page 6).
Swain (1998) identifies three specific conditions or ways in which talking with a peer can enhance language learning.
Firstly, students may notice a gap between what they have said and what the target language form is. This can help them realise that they need to gain control over a particular feature of grammar or a particular vocabulary item.
Secondly, when students talk with their peers, they can try out new language forms and gain feedback (on their language usage) from their peers about what does and doesn’t work. This is called hypothesis testing . The peer’s feedback comes in the form of checking whether they have understood the intended message and any requests for repetition or clarification. The feedback the speaker receives is focused, at the appropriate level for the speaker, and timed just after the speaker’s error. It provides the speaker with valuable information about how comprehensible their language is. The way the feedback is delivered – its focus, level, and timing – is also important.
Thirdly, when peers interact they can talk about and ask each other questions about language. This is called metatalk . Metatalk can centre on when and where to use certain words or forms, and how to use them. (See also the inquiry Learning from talking and writing .)
Morris and Tarone (2003) found that the EAL students in their study did not always feel that working with an ESB student was a positive experience. They did not regard their ESB peers’ feedback as necessarily sincere or helpful, but rather as criticism.
Effective teachers often give their students some autonomy in choosing partners for classroom work, especially in older classes. When the teacher teams an ESB student with an EAL student for a particular purpose, the teacher needs to ensure that both students understand the purpose and how to work together to meet it.
All teachers need to be aware of how their classroom culture supports or hinders effective language-learning interactions among their students.
