English Language Teaching in its Social Context

NAVIGATING THE DISCOURSE 313types of teacher utterances which place what we may describe as discursive pressure uponlearners, such as questioning or nominated terms, demand overt discursive work on thepart of learners that may, in turn, influence their learning outcomes.The recent research on the kinds of classroom tasks which most facilitate interactionamong learners confirms the significance of discursive pressure. A task that entails aninformation gap between interlocutors, that is unfamiliar to them, that engages learners insocial exchanges about shared goals and problems, that is undertaken by learners of differentlevels of proficiency, and that demands a single, closed solution for successful completionis found to encourage learners to have longer turns, produce more complex language, anddevote more time to explicit negotiation for meaning than any other kinds of task (Berwick1990, Long 1989 and 1996. Plough and Gass, 1993). Furthermore,Tanaka (1991) andYamazaki (1 991 ) have suggested that learner work on modifying linguistic data throughtheir own interaction provides for greater gains in learning than providing them with eitherunmodified or premodified input. In addition, Lightbown’s studies of corrective feedback(Lightbown 1991) and Swain’s exploration of the functions of learner output (Swain 1985and 1995) confirm that feedback is most likely to have an impact on the learner’sinterlanguage if it occurs at times when the learner is working hard to convey a particularmessage. In sum, the struggle to negotiate for meaning through overt discursive workrcnders relatively complex text comprehensible and, consistent with a major assumptionin SLA research, thereby facilitates learning.However, different learners will navigate through the discourse of lessons in differentways depending upon their own definitions of the situation, their previous experiences ofclassrooms, and their particular understanding of the dynamic social practices or culture ofthe classroom group (Breen op. ut.). Learners will therefore place different values andsignificance upon their role as a participant in the class. Overt discursive pressure uponparticular learners or even spontaneous participation do not alone account for differencesin what learners learn from a lesson. Day’s (1 984) replication of Seliger’s study of “highinput generators” (Seliger op. at.) and Ely’s (1 986) investigation of learner initiatedutterances found no relationship between overt learner participation and later testattainment. In tracing learners’ immediate “uptake” from lessons of previously unknownvocabulary, Slimani (1 989 and 1992; Chapter 18 of this book) confirmed Allwright’shypothesis that different learners will learn different things even from the same lesson(Allwright op. at.). Slimani made the interesting discovery that low-participating and evennon-participating learners often recalled as much from lessons as did high-participatinglearners. And, significantly, learners recalled more items from lessons if they weretopicalised or introduced into the text of the lesson by learners rather than those topicalisedby the teacher. Slimani deduced that low-participating learners were directly benefitingfrom their high-participating colleagues. Allwright interpreted these findings as suggestingthat the more proficient learners in a class who appeared to be those more willing toparticipate were taking on the burden of discursive work but without seemingly gainingfrom it. In other words, proficiency in the language may enable greater participation ratherthan participation leading to gains in proficiency. Slimani’s study also cast doubt on theclaims of mainstream SLA researchers that conversational modifications lead to greatercomprehensibility and, thereby, increased likelihood of acquisition. In fact she found norelationship between the number of conversational adjustments occurring in the text oflessons around specific linguistic items and the “uptake” of these items by learners.A recent replication of Slimani’s study by Dobinson (1 996) largely confirmed thesefindings and suggested that differences between learners in what they recalled from lessonswere due to a whole range of factors and that some of the previously unknown vocabulary