Page 118 - Beyond Methods

106 Facilitating negotiated interaction
Interaction as an Interpersonal Activity
In light of the limitations of interaction as a textual activity, con- versation and its role in language learning gained some importance. We shall elaborate by focusing on two hypotheses: interaction hy- pothesis and output hypothesis.
INTERACTION HYPOTHESIS
Recognizing that L2 interactional studies had hitherto focused nar- rowly on linguistic input, be it foreigner-talk or teacher-talk, Evelyn Hatch (1978, p. 403) pointed out that “it is not enough to look at input and the frequency of the use of a particular structure; the im- portant thing is to look at the corpus as a whole and examine the interactions that take place within conversations to see how that in- teraction, itself, determines frequency of forms and how it shows language functions evolving.” She further argued that it is possible to learn an L2 through the process of interaction. The lead given by Hatch has prompted several studies resulting in a substantial body of literature on input and interaction.
In a series of studies on the relationship between input, inter- action, and L2 development spanning over a period of fifteen years, Michael Long proposed (Long, 1981) and updated (Long, 1996) what has come to be known as the interaction hypothesis. To put it simply, the hypothesis claims that oral interaction in which com- munication problems are negotiated between participants pro- motes L2 comprehension and production, ultimately facilitating language development. The term interaction is used restrictively to refer to a particular type of interaction in which negotiation of meaning is involved. The need for negotiation of meaning arises when participants in an interactional activity try either to prevent a potential communication breakdown or to repair an actual com- munication breakdown that has already occurred.
In the context of negotiation of meaning, Long makes a distinc- tion between modified input and modified interaction. The former involves modifications of language input that has short phrases and sentences, fewer embeddings, and greater repetition of nouns and verbs, while the latter involves modifications of the conversa- tional structure that has a considerable number of comprehension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests. A compre- hension check is the speaker’s way of finding out whether the hearer has understood what was said (“Do you understand me?” or