Empirical Study On The Effectiveness Of Different S-S Pair Patterns In EFL Interaction Class

The use of pair/group activities in the second/foreign language classroom has been supported by both the theoretical and pedagogical arguments. And in China, this kind of interaction activities are being more and more widely employed in the EFL class. However, many English teachers have expressed their concerns about their effectiveness of promoting the EFL learners'language development, as they noticed that many students engage in the activities passively. In the researcher's opinion, it is a problem caused by the pair/group patterns the English teacher employed rather than by the interaction activity itself. Thus, it poses a need to compare the results of different pair patterns, including those widely used in the EFL class in China.In this research, students from two classes of the same level were selected as subjects, and they were divided into three groups with different pair patterns being applied in each group (Group A, fixed-pair matched by teacher; Group B, fixed-pair group matched by students themselves; Group C, free-pair group), the external factors as teacher, learning materials, syllabus design were the same in three groups. Before and after the experiment, the researcher conducted two questionnaire surveys to measure students'wiliness to communicate in English, and their attitude toward pair interaction in English class was measured later, then a comparison of the questionnaire results were also made. In order to compare the difference of students'language output, the researcher picked out the tape recordings of students'pair talk when finishing the first and last interaction task, during the transcription, number of such items as C-units, turns, and errors were calculated and compared later. Besides, the interaction features as negotiation for meaning, LREs and recasts were also noted, since negotiation for meaning was noted most frequently, the researcher further calculated the number of its subcategories, including confirmation check, clarification request, comprehension check, statistical comparison of their numbers was also conducted later. In this experiment, class observation and interview were employed to get supplement information for the research.By employing the method of one-way ANOVA, it was found that students in Group B produced more Turns, C-units and less errors than students in other twp groups after the experiment, and this kind of difference was statistically significant, students in Group A also produced more Turns, C-units and less errors than students in Group C, but only the difference of C-units was of statistical significance. In the groups of fixed-pair pattern (Group A and Group B), clarification request was employed more often than other strategies, in Group C, students tended to use comprehension more. By employing the method of paired sample test, the scores students got in the questionnaire surveys of "willingness to communicate" and "perception of pair work in class" after experiment were compared with that before experiment, and it was found that after experiment, students in all the groups displayed an increase of willingness to communicate, but only the increase in Group B was statistically significant. Students in both Group A and Group B displayed a more positive perception of pair work in class, while in Group C, students turned to be less favored of pair work than before. The analysis of pair talk data revealed that students in all groups often neglect the language form and always turn to L1 during the interaction, in the groups of fixed-pair pattern, there were more evidence of peer assistance and interaction as an interpersonal activity, while in the group of free-pair pattern, students'non-facilitative/unpleasant interaction occurred more often.The research results above indicated that learners from the group of the fixed pair pattern significantly outperformed those from the group of free pair pattern, which is employed most frequently by the English teachers in China. Furthermore, the comparison between the two groups of fixed pair pattern revealed that the method of matching by students themselves is more preferable than the method of matching by the teacher.