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INTRODUCTION
Small group work in EFL classrooms is a widespread practice, enthusiastically
endorsed in much of the literature It is seen as beneficial m several ways it
increases the amount of class time available to an individual student to
practise speaking the target language, it decreases the amount of time students
spend listening {or not listening) to other class members interacting with the
teacher, it avoids the anxiety and self-consciousness that prevent some
students from speaking up in front of the whole class, it allows the teacher
more opportunity for individual instruction In sum, it can help to create a
positive and relaxed learning environment (See Long 1977 for a full
discussion ) Investigation of the language produced by small groups has
2 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
tended to justify these hopes It has been found, for example, that when
interacting in small groups students talk more than they do in teacher-fronted
activities (Pica and Doughty 1985), that they do not talk less accurately or
carefully (Porter 1983), and that they have the opportunity to practise a
greater variety of speech acts (Long et al 1976)
Other research has focused on whether students working in dyads or groups
can provide each other with the Comprehensible Input (Krashen 1981, 1982)
that has been claimed to be a cruaal element in second language acquisition
either volunteered their time, or who had been 'lent' by their teacher How
far the performance of NNSs under research conditions reflects their
performance in the classroom is therefore largely unknown Although it
should be self-evident that performance in one set of circumstances cannot
predict with any confidence performance in a different set of circumstances,
the studies mentioned above (and many others in the field) do not consider
the setting of the research to be a significant intervening vanable Indeed, if
context is mentioned at all in the description of the research, it usually
The subjects
These were part-time students in the same intermediate level class at a large
municipal college, meeting three times a week for two hours They came from
a wide vanety of LI backgrounds (e g Korean, Spanish, Arabic, French) and
from a wide age range (17 to 41), with an average age of 21 They had been
assigned to the intermediate level on the basis of a written test and a short
interview At the time of data gathenng, the class had been running for more
than two months, and any student of inappropriately high or low proficiency
had already been transferred to a more suitable level The subjects can be seen
as highly typical of the very large number of part-time learners of English in
colleges throughout Britain
Twenty-one students from the class were observed in this study All but two
were female Each student is identified in the tables of results by mitial(s)
Some were observed for all four of the tasks, but, because of erratic
attendance or poor quality recordings, most were not Consequently, robust
cross-task comparisons of results are not possible except in so far as the
6 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
The setting
As far as possible the setting of a 'real classroom' was preserved All
recordings were made dunng four scheduled lessons The teacher acted as
researcher, avoiding the need for the presence of a stranger in the classroom
The tasks
Four tasks were chosen for this study Two were done by the students
working in dyads, and two by the students working in small groups of four or
five All of the tasks chosen for analysis in this study came from books
designed to be used in a 'communicative' classroom Two of the tasks could
only be done if the participants shared individually-held information These
are here described as required information exchange tasks The other two
tasks provided the same information to all participants They are described as
optional information exchange tasks For the dyadic set-up, the tasks recorded
were as follows
1 A grammar-based task Students were required to compose questions that
would elicit the given answers The dyads had to compose a suitable
interrogative (For example, to the given answer, 'I see him once or twice a
week', the students would need to formulate a question such as, 'How often
do you see him 7 ') As there was no obligation to exchange information, this
task is classified as an optional information exchange {Task taken from Soars
and Soars 1987 )
2 Picture differences Each member of the dyads was given either sheet A or B
of a photocopy of 20 small line drawings Some of these drawings were
identical on both sheets, others had slight differences Without showing each
other their versions, the students had to establish which drawings were the
same and which were different This could only be done by students sharing
information, and is classified as a required information exchange (Task taken
from Klrppel 1984 )
For the small group set-up the tasks recorded were as follows
3 Consensus This was a discussion task in which students were set a problem
(I e they are made redundant) and given several possible courses of action
Once they had reached a consensus on which course to follow, they received
PAULINE FOSTER 7
Data collection
Recordings were made at weekly intervals during scheduled classes The tasks
were all done as part of a normal lesson plan and were not presented as being in
any way 'special' The students knew that they were being recorded, but in
order to minimize any self-consciousness or anxiety they were not asked to
hold a microphone or to speak deliberately in the direction of the tape recorder
It was hoped that the recordings would thereby capture the students' most
'normal' group work interaction This had a cost, however Two tapes had to be
discarded because much of the interaction was inaudible Two further tapes
could not be used because students had not properly attempted the task (l e
they had showed each other their photocopies in Task 2) Also discarded was
one tape that had recorded only two and a half minutes of interaction before
the students declared the task finished There remained three recordings for
each task dyad Tasks I and 2 thus have six subjects each, and group Tasks 3 and
4 have 14 subjects each (As we have noted above, the same subjects do not
necessarily appear across all four of the tasks) For Tasks 1, 2, and 3 the first five
minutes of interaction was transcribed and coded For Task 4, in which a lot of
information had to be exchanged, the initial ten minutes of interaction was
transcribed and coded in order to give all the group members time to
contribute These scores were then halved to enable comparisons to be made
Language production
C-units were calculated to measure the amount of language produced by each
dyad and group and are shown in Table 1 Apart from task 3, which shows all
PAULINE FOSTER 9
of the groups producing c-units to roughly the same degree, the dyads and
groups have a very wide range of scores, for example, whereas for the picture
differences task dyad 2b produced 138 c-units, dyad 2a produced only 59, for
the map task group 4b produced 84 c-units, but group 4a only 38 Although
the required information exchange task for all the dyads consistently resulted
m more c-umts than the optional information exchange task, the opposite
was true for two of the groups where the requirement to exchange
information is associated with less language being produced
It is revealing to examine student performance at the individual level
Table 2 shows that group 3b shared the interaction fairly between them (with
Task 3 I V Ig J F C Su Ah E A V S Y Ar
(optional informa- 48 25 8 10 25 26 35 30 1 29 35 0 7 1
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R o S V S u T
(required informa- 17 10 10 1 0 37 15 17 15 27 4 23 20 0
tion exchange)
10 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
student E as a notable exception) but in all the other groups one or two of the
students were dominant, with the other members remaining either quiet or
totally silent Students E, S, and Ar contributed little or nothing to task 3
Students K, T, S, and Al contributed little or nothing to task 4 even though it
required them to share information with their partners All were known to be
extremely quiet in the whole-class setting This suggests that the claim of
Doughty and Pica (1986 321) that a required information exchange task can
'compel' students to speak is overconfident, at least as far as small-group work
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 17 16 40 48 30 10
tion exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 32 27 92 46 28 56
tion exchange)
Comprehensible Input
Negotiation of meaning was measured by determining the number of
negotiation moves (comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and
clarification requests) made by each dyad and group The scores for these
variables are shown in Table 4 The most negotiation moves {15 9% of c-
units) were produced by dyad lb doing an optional information exchange
task The least (0%) were produced by dyad la doing the same task
Similarly, the second highest score for negotiation moves (13 7%) was for
12 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
la lb lc
Dyad Task 1 0 0 14 15 9 2
(optional information
Group Task 3 2 22 16 1 3 7 3 41
(optional information
exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Group Task 4 3 79 9 10 7 7 95
{required information
exchange
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 0 0 9 5 2 0
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 5 3 14 2 3 4
tion exchange)
that the majority of students were not overtly engaged in negotiating meaning
to any significant extent Of the 40 scores presented, only 6 are for more than
4 negotiation moves Twenty-six are for 2 or fewer negotiation moves There
are 16 zeros, almost all of which are from the group tasks
Presumably the students in the groups (if they were properly attending to
the discussion) were content to receive the comprehensible input generated
by someone else's negotiating (Similarly, Low Input Generators (Sehger
1983) used High Input Generators in a parasitic fashion ) In 3c, 4b, and 4c,
one student only took an active negotiating role, the others remained more
or less passive Perhaps they understood the discourse without the need to
check or clarify anything (After all, language can be syntactically very
deviant and yet still comprehensible ) Or perhaps they were not sufficiently
Task 3 I V I g J F C S u A h E A V S Y A r
(optional informa- 0 2 0 0 3 4 4 5 0 0 3 0 0 0
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R o S V S u T
(required informa- 1 2 0 0 0 1 1 6 1 4 0 2 1 0
tion exchange)
14 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
Modified O u t p u t
The incidence of modified output (l e utterances that were morphologically,
semantically, syntactically, or phonologically altered in response to a
negotiation move) was calculated for each dyad and group Individual
scores were also calculated This data is shown in Tables 7, 8, and 9 Most
modification moves were made by dyad lb doing a task that required
agreement on an appropriate and correct interrogative, but Table 7 shows the
other two dyads doing this task managing only one example between them
Interestingly, for each task type one dyad or group (l e lb and 2a) produced
far more modified output than the others, whose scores are very low and
within a very narrow range, 0% to 2 8% of total c-units A comparison of
Table 7 with Table 4 reveals that the (comparatively) high levels of modified
output for dyads lb and 2a might have been foreseen, as these dyads
produced (comparatively) high levels of negotiation moves The same
companson, however, would have predicted much more modified output
for group 3b than it actually achieved (3b is the second highest producer of
negotiation moves, but the third lowest producer of modified output) The
dyads in general show more modified output than the groups
The most notable feature of Tables 8 and 9 are the numerous zeros Of the
40 scores presented, 28 are for 0, and a further 8 are for only 1 By far the
highest incidence of zeros occurs in the group tasks The data reported by Pica
ex al (1989) shows that their 10 NSs made a total of 327 negotiation moves
dunng the three tasks they were set, and that the 10 NNS interlocutors made
327 responses, of which an impressive 116 were modified Although Pica et al
PAULINE FOSTER 15
la lb lc
Dyad Task 1 0 0 7 79 1 2 5
(optional information
Dyad Task 2 3 51 3 22 1 12
(required information
exchange)
3a 3b 3c
Group Task 3 0 0 1 0 8 2 2 8
(optional information
exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Group Task 4 1 2 6 0 0 1 1 3
(required information
exchange)
could conclude from their study that modified output is 'alive and well' in
NNS/NS interaction, whether it was alive and well in the present classroom
study is made clear in Tables 7, 8, and 9 In response to the total of 87
negotiation moves, modified responses occurred only 20 times, and 13 of
these were produced by three dyads In the remaining nine groupings,
modified output occurs hardly at all
What, we may ask, happened to the 67 negotiation moves that did not
receive a modified response7 Thirty received unmodified repetitions of the
problem utterance, or else a simple yes/no response The remainder, 37 moves
in all, did not receive a verbal response Audiotapes cannot help us
understand why these checks and requests seem to go unanswered They
may have been ignored or unheard, or given a non-verbal response, or
perhaps the speaker did not wait for an answer
A 'the sports field, swimming poo! and equipment may be used free of charge '
B Free of charge? What is that?
C (laughs) Yes
A sports day
16 A CLASSROOM PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEGOTIATION OF MEANING
A There is this one, this one, and after to camping site near Oldfield
B Oldfield?
C Anyway, the best thing I think is er camping
Task 1 C F 0 V A S
(optional informa- 0 0 2 5 0 1
tion exchange)
2a 2b 2c
Task 2 C R A S J Al
(required informa- 1 2 0 3 1 0
tion exchange)
Task 3 I V I g J F C S A h E A V S Y A r
(optional informa- 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
tion exchange)
4a 4b 4c
Task 4 C J F A l K A I g M R R S V S u T
(required informa- 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0
tion exchange)
PAULINE FOSTER 17
them not to pay close attention to the form of their language In the study
conducted by Pica et al (1989) the NNSs were in an experimental context
rather than an informal classroom and perhaps more focused on the task and
its successful completion, they were in dyads where it is harder to ignore
questions Most important of all, however, could be the fact that the NNSs
were interacting with NSs and would therefore have felt an inequality of
status regarding the language Any communication problem affecting the
smooth completion of a task may have been felt by the NNSs to be their fault
examples used in the studies cited by Swain, all of which would be familiar to
a classroom teacher Nevertheless, the fact that in this present study the other
two dyads doing the grammar-based Task 1 produced next to nothing in the
way of modified output should remind us that teachers can create
opportunities for modified output, not ensure that they will be taken
This paper has argued that some current claims in Second Language
Acquisition research are of academic rather than practical interest because the
researchers have lost sight of the world inhabited by language teachers and
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