English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
English Language Teaching in its Social Context
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NAVIGATING THE DISCOURSE 313types of teacher utterances which place what we may describe as discursive pressure uponlearners, such as question<strong>in</strong>g or nom<strong>in</strong>ated terms, demand overt discursive work on thepart of learners that may, <strong>in</strong> turn, <strong>in</strong>fluence their learn<strong>in</strong>g outcomes.The recent research on the k<strong>in</strong>ds of classroom tasks which most facilitate <strong>in</strong>teractionamong learners confirms the significance of discursive pressure. A task that entails an<strong>in</strong>formation gap between <strong>in</strong>terlocutors, that is unfamiliar to them, that engages learners <strong>in</strong>social exchanges about shared goals and problems, that is undertaken by learners of differentlevels of proficiency, and that demands a s<strong>in</strong>gle, closed solution for successful completionis found to encourage learners to have longer turns, produce more complex language, anddevote more time to explicit negotiation for mean<strong>in</strong>g than any other k<strong>in</strong>ds of task (Berwick1990, Long 1989 and 1996. Plough and Gass, 1993). Furthermore,Tanaka (1991) andYamazaki (1 991 ) have suggested that learner work on modify<strong>in</strong>g l<strong>in</strong>guistic data throughtheir own <strong>in</strong>teraction provides for greater ga<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> learn<strong>in</strong>g than provid<strong>in</strong>g them with eitherunmodified or premodified <strong>in</strong>put. In addition, Lightbown’s studies of corrective feedback(Lightbown 1991) and Swa<strong>in</strong>’s exploration of the functions of learner output (Swa<strong>in</strong> 1985and 1995) confirm that feedback is most likely to have an impact on the learner’s<strong>in</strong>terlanguage if it occurs at times when the learner is work<strong>in</strong>g hard to convey a particularmessage. In sum, the struggle to negotiate for mean<strong>in</strong>g through overt discursive workrcnders relatively complex text comprehensible and, consistent with a major assumption<strong>in</strong> SLA research, thereby facilitates learn<strong>in</strong>g.However, different learners will navigate through the discourse of lessons <strong>in</strong> differentways depend<strong>in</strong>g upon their own def<strong>in</strong>itions of the situation, their previous experiences ofclassrooms, and their particular understand<strong>in</strong>g 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 <strong>in</strong> the class. Overt discursive pressure uponparticular learners or even spontaneous participation do not alone account for differences<strong>in</strong> what learners learn from a lesson. Day’s (1 984) replication of Seliger’s study of “high<strong>in</strong>put generators” (Seliger op. at.) and Ely’s (1 986) <strong>in</strong>vestigation of learner <strong>in</strong>itiatedutterances found no relationship between overt learner participation and later testatta<strong>in</strong>ment. In trac<strong>in</strong>g 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 th<strong>in</strong>gs even from the same lesson(Allwright op. at.). Slimani made the <strong>in</strong>terest<strong>in</strong>g discovery that low-participat<strong>in</strong>g and evennon-participat<strong>in</strong>g learners often recalled as much from lessons as did high-participat<strong>in</strong>glearners. And, significantly, learners recalled more items from lessons if they weretopicalised or <strong>in</strong>troduced <strong>in</strong>to the text of the lesson by learners rather than those topicalisedby the teacher. Slimani deduced that low-participat<strong>in</strong>g learners were directly benefit<strong>in</strong>gfrom their high-participat<strong>in</strong>g colleagues. Allwright <strong>in</strong>terpreted these f<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs as suggest<strong>in</strong>gthat the more proficient learners <strong>in</strong> a class who appeared to be those more will<strong>in</strong>g toparticipate were tak<strong>in</strong>g on the burden of discursive work but without seem<strong>in</strong>gly ga<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>gfrom it. In other words, proficiency <strong>in</strong> the language may enable greater participation ratherthan participation lead<strong>in</strong>g to ga<strong>in</strong>s <strong>in</strong> proficiency. Slimani’s study also cast doubt on theclaims of ma<strong>in</strong>stream SLA researchers that conversational modifications lead to greatercomprehensibility and, thereby, <strong>in</strong>creased likelihood of acquisition. In fact she found norelationship between the number of conversational adjustments occurr<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the text oflessons around specific l<strong>in</strong>guistic items and the “uptake” of these items by learners.A recent replication of Slimani’s study by Dob<strong>in</strong>son (1 996) largely confirmed thesef<strong>in</strong>d<strong>in</strong>gs and suggested that differences between learners <strong>in</strong> what they recalled from lessonswere due to a whole range of factors and that some of the previously unknown vocabulary