The Influence Of Classroom Negotiated Interaction On L2Learners’ Conversational Ability

As far as language classroom is concerned, negotiation refers to theconversational adjustment, modification or propulsion that are made by the teachersor advanced learners and the interlocutors in order to realize mutual understanding, orto gain more accurate language forms of expressions, or to obtain more relevantinformation. Researchers on Second Language Acquisition commonly recognize thatnegotiated interaction plays an important role in SLA. Since1980s，classroom secondlanguage acquisition has got its position, many researchers shifted their focus onnegotiated interaction in classroom. However, throughout all the researches onnegotiation, majority of them are only one-type focused. Though some researchers inChina have made efforts to investigate all the three negotiation types, they merelyfocus on reflecting the picture of teachers’ application and its frequency distribution inclassroom. Though there are studies on the relationships between negotiation andlearners’ immediate oral output, their emphasis is just confined to leaners’ immediateoral output and syntactic complexity, no study concentrates on the effects of differentnegotiation types and negotiation devices on learners’ immediate oral output andlong-term effects on conversational ability both in quality and quantity. In view of thisshortcoming, the present study will take the two elements together into consideration,making efforts to explore the effects of different negotiation types and negotiationdevices in a first-year English Major class in China. By analyzing the data collected,the major findings are as follows:First, in terms of negotiation types, the teacher in the observed class prefers tonegotiating on content to meaning and form. The acts of “clarification requests,confirmation check and elicitation were frequently used by the teacher.Second, in terms of the effect of different negotiation types on learners’immediate output, negotiation of content seems to be most helpful in enhancingstudents’ complex output, while negotiation of form is not satisfactory in pushingleaners’ output. As for the effect of negotiation devices, elicitation and repair results in more complex students’ immediate output. As for the quantity of output, clarificationis most helpful in enhancing students’ longest output; prompt, repair incitation andrepair follow.Third, by analyzing the two tests before and after the experiment, negotiationdoes play a significant role in promoting leaners’ conversational ability. Studentsmake progress in terms of accuracy, fluency and syntactic complexity to differentdegree.The study presents a real picture of the development of the learners’conversational ability in the Chinese College English major EFL classroom.In view of the findings, enhanced negotiated interaction in classroom plays a positiverole in promoting leaners’ conversational ability.