Small-group Interaction Strategy Training In College English Classroom

The current study takes non-English majored freshmen as subjects. Researchers observed the interaction patterns they used during small-group discussion tasks, aiming to find out the relationship between interaction strategy training and EFL learners'interaction patterns. Firstly, we investigated the current situation of small-group interaction, in order to prove the necessity of interaction strategy training. Then we compared two similar groups of students as they carried out the same group activities. Both groups are recorded twice: once before the experiment (pretest), and the other after the experiment (posttest). After transcribing and inputting the data, researchers analyzed the following variables with software SPSS:1). Overall participation: measured by the number of turns taken. A turn is defined as"any speaker's expression followed by another speaker's expression". In this study, when another learner begins to speak, only when the first speaker stops, this turn can be considered to come to its end. Therefore, when there is an overlap between two speakers, if the first speaker continues during the interruption of the other speaker, and then after that interruption, the first speaker's talk is counted as one turn, while the interruption of other speakers is also counted as a turn. Besides, laughter is not counted as a turn, but if it interrupts the current speaker's turn, the restarted speech is classified as another individual turn. We must note that nonverbal communication and exclamations (listener responses or lexical and non-lexical backchannels) are not considered to be turns.2). Interactive participation: defined by the number of times the students making use of asking follow-up questions, requesting and giving clarification, repair, and requesting and giving help.3). Non-interactive participation: defined by the number of participation turns, where no interaction strategies are used.The result indicates that this strategy training program is significantly successful in encouraging students to use all kinds of interaction strategies except for the strategy of requesting and giving help. The increased use of interaction strategies improves students'overall participation and interactive participation, while decreasing non-interactive participation.