Negotiation Of Meaning In The Foreign Language Teaching And Learning

In language teaching circles, a great many researchers have gone into teachingmethods, syllabus design, and the like, but very little attention has ever been paid towhat is actually going on inside the foreign language classroom setting. The foreignlanguage circles lack studies of classroom processes, especially of classroomconversations between teachers and students, and among students at work in dyads. Itis of great significance, therefore, to understand the contribution of negotiation ofmeaning in the classroom setting to the language development. This has indeed beenthe research center for a considerable amount of work over the last few decades.Currently, researches have focused on negotiation of meaning from differentperspectives and various fields: negotiation of meaning in cognition, negotiation ofmeaning in interaction, and negotiation of meaning in the second language acquisition.Such is the current situation of researches on negotiation of meaning. In the field ofthe foreign language classroom setting, especially in China, however, even lessattention is paid to the classroom processes, negotiation between teachers, studentsand peers, and the role of the negotiation.The purpose of this study is to focus on negotiation of meaning in the foreignlanguage learning setting. And this paper is centered on whether or not the studentsacquire more comprehensible input in negotiation of meaning than non-negotiation ofmeaning while they are learning new words or phrases, whether or not collaborationin negotiation of meaning is conducive to low anxiety, high self-confidence and greatinterest in learning the foreign language, and whether or not there is a positivecorrelation between the frequency of negotiation of meaning and the vocabularyacquisition. With a view to making sure that the valid results are gained, the scientificresearch methods are adopted: Great importance is attached to the selection of thesubjects, the adoption and design of the instruments. The questionnaires, tests andtranscription are well designed and precisely undertaken. Therefore, with thecombination of the qualitative and quantitative methodologies, the special SPSS andEXCEL are employed to analyze all the data obtained in the experiment. It is worthmentioning that different from other researches on negotiation of meaning, this studytakes the use of the first language and pause into consideration as new ways ofnegotiation of meaning with the combination of the cognitive research, interaction hypothesis and social cultural theory.From this empirical study of 182 junior high school students and college students,a conclusion is drawn that negotiation of meaning is conducive to the vocabularylearning in the foreign language teaching and learning. It is apparent that participantsin the experimental groups can attain a higher score in the vocabulary test that those inthe controlled groups. All in all, it is of great significance for this study to give thepriority to the role of the students, the interaction between the students and teachers,especially negotiation of meaning. It is hoped that this study may be of great help forteachers to realize how important the negotiation is, and may cultivate a new way ofstudying the foreign language learning and teaching.This paper consists of six chapters. In Chapter 1, the purpose, significance andorganization of this study are clearly demonstrated. In the second chapter of literaturereview, the various views concerning negotiation of meaning are summarized, andthen there is a brief introduction of the types of negotiations and the ways ofnegotiation of meaning that may be used in this paper. In the third chapter come thereflections on the former studies and researches on negotiation of meaning. The newways of negotiation of meaning that the researcher in this paper puts forward aresupported by a larger number of studies. The key parts of this paper are Chapter 4 andChapter 5. A detailed introduction is given to the subjects, instruments, procedure andethical issues in this study in Chapter 4. The scientific results and data analysis areclearly demonstrated in the fifth chapter. At the end of this paper are the findings,implications and limitations of the study.