Page 132 - Beyond Methods

120 Facilitating negotiated interaction
meaning when a communication problem arises, and (c) in the stim- ulation of more extensive and more complex production on the part of the learner (Ellis, 1992, p. 177).
Although insufficient work has been done on the effect of learner topic control, an oft-quoted study by Assia Slimani (1989) found that learners benefited more from self- and peer-nominated topics than from teacher-nominated topics. Investigating the no- tion of “uptake,” which is defined as what learners claim to have learned from a particular lesson, she discovered that even in classes where the discourse initiation was predominantly in the hands of the teacher, “the topicalizations which provoked more attention and attracted more claims from more people were initiated by the learners themselves” (p. 228). Her study demonstrates that self- and peer-nominated topics are likely to create and sustain motivation among the learners, and give them a sense of freedom and achieve- ment in taking partial control of the classroom discourse.
A significant aspect of topic control is that it allows the learners to share their individual perspectives on current topics with the teacher as well as other learners whose lives, and hence perspec- tives, may differ from theirs. Consider, for example, the following episode taken from a high intermediate ESL class conducted in Cal- ifornia. The class focuses on “speaking” skills. The teacher had asked the class to read, as homework, a newspaper article on eu- thanasia, or mercy killing, of relatives with incurable, terminal dis- eases. The text is actually in the form of a debate between two speak- ers, Speaker A arguing for and Speaker B arguing against mercy killing.
In class, the teacher formed two groups, asking one group to focus on the arguments of Speaker A and another group on those of Speaker B. The learners were asked to work together and make a list of the arguments of their respective speaker. The groups worked together for about ten minutes and then reported to the class on their group discussion. The classroom interactional extract given below begins there. As you read, focus on the features of topic man- agement.