NEGOTIATION, NOTICING, AND THE ROLE OF SELECTIVE CROSSLINGUAL STRATEGIES IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOMS MA in TEFL thesis, William R. Pellowe, 1998
PREVIOUS	TITLE PAGE TABLE OF CONTENTS REFERENCES	NEXT
http://www2.gol.com/users/billp/thesis/index.html et seq billp@gol.com

It has been noted that L1 use circumvents the necessity for negotiation of meaning, thus the role of L1 in language classrooms is extremely limited, if not nonexistent. This argument requires closer examination. In this chapter, I first outline what negotiation is, and then examine transcripts from EFL and ESL contexts to determine the extent to which this argument is applicable to EFL classrooms.

2.1 Negotiation of Meaning

When learners use L2, they become accustomed to expressing themselves using their available resources. When difficulties arise, learners are prompted to "push to the limit their emerging competence" (Nunan, 1991, p. 50). By doing so, they are able to test hypotheses regarding language form (eg. Skehan, 1994, p. 177) by creatively constructing novel utterances, and subsequently receiving feedback on the comprehensibility and accuracy of their messages. This feedback is best provided through the process of negotiation (Pica, 1996), defined as "the modification and restructuring of interaction that occurs when learners and their interlocutors anticipate, perceive, or experience difficulties in message comprehensibility" (Pica, 1994, p. 494).

2.1.1

It is important to distinguish between acquisitional strategies and communication strategies. Feedback focusing merely on comprehensibility is insufficient in acquisitional terms in that learners' interlanguage systems are said to improve through noticing differences between their hypotheses of language and the L2 system, allowing learners to re-evaluate their beliefs in light of new evidence (see, e.g., Sharwood Smith, 1994).

2.1.2

There are limits on negotiation, however. Student-initiated negotiations of meaning are not always forthcoming due to an "intimacy factor": Students more often initiate communication with teachers either one on one or within small groups, and not in front of the whole class (Musumeci, 1996, p. 318). The reluctance of students to announce when they do not understand can cause them to feign understanding, rather than initiate negotiation (Doughty & Pica, 1986, p. 319). Even if learners request clarifications, they may feign comprehension rather than persist in negotiation after initial attempts fail (Ellis et al, 1994).

2.1.3

Furthermore, negotiation "doesn't occur when topics and referents are so mutually familiar that learners and interlocutors are confronted with few impasses in their communication over which they can negotiate" (Pica, 1996, p. 258, italics in original). Negotiations of meaning are most frequent when both partners are language learners (Varonis & Gass, 1985). However, there is an inverse relationship between similarities between learners and the need for negotiation of meaning: The greater the similarity between learners, the less the need for negotiation (in Lynch, 1996, p. 10). Negotiation and modified input is highest when all participants are non-native speakers of varying proficiency levels and different L1s (Doughty & Pica, 1986). Doughty and Pica point out that "these results are encouraging to teachers, as they reflect the makeup of small groups in most second language classrooms" (p. 321, italics mine).

2.1.4

So where does this leave foreign language classrooms, where learners share very similar backgrounds and identical L1s? Below, I examine teacher/class and learner/learner negotiations and the comprehensibility of learners' messages with an eye on the suitability of negotiation-driven proscriptions of L1 in EFL classrooms.

2.2 "Barranquismo"

The following transcript appeared in an account of "an in-service training project designed to raise [teacher] trainees' awareness...of the degree of communicativeness in their classroom interactions" (Thornbury, 1996, p. 279). An elementary EFL class in Spain arrives at "a breakthrough point" (in the teacher's words, p. 286) which, for the first time ever, initiates extended negotiation to bridge an information gap.

[An elementary class has been working on the language of making suggestions]

S1:What about go to mountains?

T: What about...?

S1: What about going to mountains, we can do 'barranking'. [Ss. laugh]

T: What is 'barranking'?

S2: Is a sport.

T: Yes, but what do you do exactly?

S3: You have a river, a small river and ... [gestures]

T: Goes down?

S3: Yes, as a cataract.

T: OK, a waterfall [writes it on board]. What's a waterfall, Manual? Can you give me an example? A famous waterfall. [draws]

S1: Like Niagara?

T: OK. So what do you do with the waterfall?

S4: You go down.

T: What? In a boat?

S4: No, no, with a ...¿Como se dice cuerda?

S3: Cord.
T: No, rope, a cord is smaller, like at the window, look. [points].
S2:You wear? Black clothes...
T: Repeat [student repeats]...[...] This sounds dangerous, is it dangerous?
Ss: No, no.

S3: In summer, no much water.

T: Sorry?

S3: Poco...poco...little water, river is not strong.

T: OK...and you have done this? What's it called in Spanish?

S4: Barranquismo. In English?

T: I don't know. I'll have to ask somebody.

S2: It is good, you come? ¿Como es dìu? Let's go together.

T: I don't think so. [laughs]

S4: Yes, yes, you come, we can go in summer.

T: Well, in the summer, not now, it's too cold.

Ss: No, no.

(Thornbury, 1997, pp. 285-286)

This teacher comments that prior to this lesson, the students "had displayed reluctance in initiating discussions" and asking questions, but later, while listening to the taped extract, "they surprised themselves...with the volume of language produced" (ibid, p. 286). In the following sections, I analyze this extract in detail.

2.2.1 Discourse Shift

This extract starts with what is apparently an exchange in which the focus is clearly on the form of the utterance as language samples. S1 produces, "What about go to mountains", and the teacher's feedback points out the error. The student complies with the correction, yet a shift occurs: this time, with the addition of "we can do barranking", the utterance is ambiguous insofar as it could be interpreted as having genuine propositional value. Willis (1992) describes how this type of shift can be initiated by students "deliberately escaping from (the) formal constraints imposed by (the) teacher" (p. 176), and indeed, "humor can be generated" (ibid) by these shifts, although it is unclear if the ensuing laugher was caused by this shift or by the creation of an "English" gerund from barranco [ravine, gorge]. The teacher, by following up with a genuine question ("What is barranking?"), accomplishes two things at once:

1. His response is to the content, not the form -- note that he did not provide feedback (e.g. "Good" or "Right") on S1's corrected utterance. This upgrades the status of S1's utterance from a possible Response (to the initial correction) to an Initiation (and thus the teacher's own utterance becomes a Response/Initiation, see Francis & Hunston, 1992). In short, this becomes quite similar to a real conversation.
2. Sanctioning S1's "escape" from rote practice of forms, without censure, indeed by using the term "barranking" himself, may have provided the right trigger to encourage the rest of the students in this hitherto quiet class to participate.

2.2.2 L1

S3 produces what appears to be two false cognates (cf. Carter & McCarthy, 1988, p. 14) which the teacher recognizes and subsequently corrects. The first, "cataract", is quite similar to catarata [waterfall]. While true that one English meaning of "cataract" is indeed "waterfall", it is a literary word for large waterfalls, and not very common (Collins COBUILD Dictionary, Sinclair, 1995). The second, "cord" for cuerda [thin rope] follows S4's L1-encoded translation request (¿Como se dice cuerda? [How do you say "thin rope"?]). The teacher does not, however, know barranquismo. Some Spanish Internet sites on barranquismo provide ideas of what this sport entails. Apparently one descends into ravines or gorges containing rapidly flowing water, using climbing ropes to brace against the current. From a photo, it appears that S2's "black clothes" means "wetsuit".

2.2.3 Negotiation of Form During Negotiation of Meaning

It is interesting that the teacher and students pursued this with a very real focus on negotiation of meaning. Not only the students, but also the teacher no longer focused on the "language of making suggestions" which was initially being highlighted; when S2 and S4 say "you come?", the teacher reacts not to the form but to the propositional content.

2.2.3.1

However, during the negotiation, S2 mispronounces "special clothes", which is corrected, with S2 repeating the correction. This plus the corrections of false cognates (2.2.2) indicate a dual focus: the primary focus is on meaning, with an incidental focus on forms which occur during the negotiation.

2.2.3.2

This dual focus is desirable; Seedhouse (1997) argues in favor of correction which helps maintain a dual meaning/form focus, without correction itself achieving "interactional prominence" (p. 341). We must ask why the teacher's incidental focus on form did not extend itself to addressing "You come?".

2.2.3.3

An explanation is suggested when we note that the incidental focus on form is systematically selective, focusing only on those utterances which would potentially interfere with communication between the students and an outsider with no Spanish knowledge. "You come?" is understandable in context, despite lacking the semi redundant attachments of native-like forms. That these forms were what the students were ostensibly studying must have seemed irrelevant to the teacher at the time, given the general excitement generated by the novelty (for this class) of the communicative process. Given the circumstances, I cannot easily fault his decision to (momentarily?) let them pass. In fact, if the "understandability" criterion were consciously present, I commend his decision.

2.2.4 Participants

If we view the extract as a dialog between two participants, it resembles the negotiation found in the literature of NS/NNS negotiation interactions. The crucial difference, though, is that this negotiation is between a teacher and a classroom of students.

2.2.4.1

S1, whose invitation initiated this negotiation, did not participate in it. S1's only further contribution was solicited ("What's a waterfall, Manual?...."), perhaps simply to keep him involved. Other students self-nominated themselves to pick up the negotiation, a situation undoubtedly familiar to both EFL and ESL teachers. Even more familiar (to EFL teachers, at least) is one student asking another in L1 for an L2 word or phrase to further the negotiation process.

2.2.5 Discussion: Barranquismo, Guided Negotiation

I found it interesting that attempts to bridge the information gap (which did exist) did not result in the teacher fully understanding what the students were inviting him to do, as no clear picture of barranquismo emerges. It can be argued that this point is product-based, not process-based, but surely if the end result is satisfying, the process is enhanced as worthwhile in the minds of the learners. I hope that the teacher did later find out what barranquismo was to report back later as promised.

2.2.5.1

However, the enthusiasm evident in this extract shows that it is satisfying. Furthermore, much has been accomplished in that two false cognates and a pronunciation fault were uncovered, two (apparently new) words were provided (but see 2.2.5.4), and S3's "no much water" was pushed towards the more accurate and meaningful "river is not strong". And importantly, as the conversation unfolded, students received linguistically rich input (e.g. "What do you do with the waterfall?", "I'll have to ask somebody", and so on) which was evidently understood. Most likely, these features would not have found their way into the pedagogical corpus if the class had remained focused on meaning-impoverished samples of language.

2.2.5.2

The use of L1 as a strategy was interesting, with students using both L2 and some L1, and the teacher soliciting L1 to aid the negotiation. Arguably, if S1 had not used L1 to make his meaning known to the others, they would not have been able to help in this negotiation. Furthermore, if this were a classroom in which L1 were proscribed, this "breakthrough point" for the class might not have happened. Last, the teacher's L1 knowledge helped move the negotiation forward.

2.2.5.3

Thus, this extract illustrates guided negotiation, a process usefully enhanced by an allowance of limited L1. Guided negotiation coupled with L1 finds precedent in Atkinson (1987), who notes, "clearly once it is established (through L1) what the learners want to say, the teacher can then encourage them to find a way of expressing their meaning in English or, if necessary, help out" (p. 342). When teachers know the meaning, yet guides the expression, it is a guided negotiation of (meaningful) forms, not unlike when one "abandons the role of 'knower'" (Ellis, 1988, p. 116) in order to participate in information gap activities despite already knowing the answers. A dual focus (negotiation of both meaning and form) is only present when teachers do not fully understand what the students are attempting to express. Full prior understanding is not necessary; the supportive encouragement is the main factor, as illustrated by Lynch (1997) in the next section (2.3).

2.2.5.4

Before moving on, though, I must voice one reservation. The teacher in "barranquismo" was perhaps too quick to supply the correct items for the false cognates. The guided negotiation would have been enhanced if he had first tried soliciting L2 words from others in the class, thus making the process more salient. S3 may not have even noticed that "waterfall" was a correction of "cataract", which could potentially result in an addition ó as opposed to a replacement ó to the learners' language systems. This criticism is made, however, knowing only too well that such "real time" decisions are affected by many factors, including the surprise of lessons taking unexpected turns.

2.3 Hotchkiss

The next extract (2.3.1) features an extended negotiation of meaning prompted by a Japanese learner's use of the word hotchkiss. In Japanese, this word is [hotchkisu, stapler], a loanword oft-cited as "Japanese English" as its use as English is firmly entrenched. The origin of the word is obscure[1], but apparently it is from an early producer of staplers (see Fig. 1).

Fig. 1: Hotchkiss Stapler No. 2 (circa 1886). Note the engraved name HOTCHKISS.

2.3.1

In the following extract from Lynch (1996, 1997), the learners are engaged in a pre writing task to create explanations of technical terms from their professional fields. There are four people present, although only three take part. T is the teacher, P is a Japanese doctor, Q is a microbiologist from Thailand, and R, silent throughout the exchange, is a Japanese veterinarian [2].

P: yeah so we we can + cut gall bladder and sew this injury with some kind of scissor and hotchkiss

Q: hm?

P: + + you know hotchkiss? + hotchkiss?

T: no we don't know hotchkiss

P: hotchkiss means + + we can use paper

T: scissors?

P: no + clip + uh clip?

T: ah

P: do you know maybe + + many people use like clip with paper

Q: paper clip?

P: yeah paper clip + + or paper hotchkiss + + um hotchkiss + + (takes two sheets of paper and pinches them together with her fingers) hotchkiss

T: hotchkiss?

P: hotchkiss

T: hotchkiss + + I recognize it as a name but I didn't know it was a clip

Q: I know clip

P: so maybe most people have ever used + + (finds a stapled set of papers) ah ah this is hotchkiss

Q: ah st- + um staple

T: staple
P: staple yes + I'm sorry + in Japan hotchkiss (laughs) so with scissors and with staple through the other two holes + + so patients can discharge within one week because we only open three holes.

(Lynch, 1996, pp. 74-75; Lynch, 1997, pp. 320-321)

2.3.1.1

This extended exchange is initiated when Q indicates that "hotchkiss" is an unfamiliar term. P, obviously believing it is English, then repeats it twice. However, the teacher confirms Q's query ("No, we don't know 'hotchkiss'"), so P tries a number of different ways of getting her meaning across; despite gestures and circumlocution, the meaning is conveyed only when she finds an actual staple to show the others.

2.3.2 Nudging

Lynch (1997) used this extract to illustrate "teachers contributing by nudging the learners towards a solution, rather than providing one themselves" (p. 324). Thus "nudging" does not imply any false pretence regarding the true extent of the teacher's knowledge -- the teacher can legitimately not know the answer, or the teacher can allow other learners a chance to jump in first with the solutions.

2.3.3 Shared L1

Of particular interest to me is the fact that R, who is also Japanese, does not utter a word during the exchange, despite undoubtedly knowing the word "hotchkiss". Lynch's explanation (1996) of R's silence does not refer to the L1 which he and P share, but to the similarities of their professions: "I believe the reason why R did not contribute more to the negotiation is that he did not need to; his own professional field ...was close to P's, so he was probably familiar with the technique she was explaining" (p. 146). Thus when Lynch notes that "separating students from same or similar backgrounds...would have widened the information gap...and would have encouraged more active negotiation" (ibid.), he means professional backgrounds, although he agrees that "learners' need to negotiate meaning varies from group to group (even using the same text/task), primarily according to whether the learners share an L1 or a common L2, apart from English" (Lynch, personal communication, e-mail, 3 January 1998).

2.3.3.1

The most credible explanation for why R did not aid P is that he too did not know the English word for "hotchkiss" (or thought "hotchkiss" was English). Because this extract is from an ESL context, negotiation among learners occurs, yet if R and P were performing the same task in an EFL classroom in Japan, with other Japanese learners, it is fair to assume that negotiation would not have occurred.

2.4 "Ong ha"

This short section complements 2.3 in that we once again see that members of a linguistically heterogeneous group receive L1-influenced slips in different ways, depending on each member's own L1. "Hotchkiss" in 2.3 was a lexical slip; in this extract, again from Lynch, the slip is phonological.

2.4.1

Lynch (1996) illustrates how negotiation of meaning among students can result in negotiation which makes speech more comprehensible, yet not more accurate, with the following conversational except. The learners are discussing the QE2 cruise ship:

E: it must be very nice to travel on her. (sounds like "ong ha")

A: yes.

H:it's?

E: it must be very nice

H: to travel

E: to travel ong ha

H: ong?

E: ong ha

H: ong ha?

E: ong ha + and next?

H: what's + what's mean 'ong ha'?

A: a ship + on a ship

H: a ship?

J: that's the ship + the boat + you know? + the Queen

A: okay

J: she is mentioned the Queen + the vessels or ship they are + they always

H: okay okay
J: always she

(Lynch, 1996, pp. 118-9)

Lynch comments that

E's faulty pronunciation of 'on her' is not explicitly corrected. Student H asks for clarification but gets only repetition from E. Finally student J explains that the word her/she refers to ships, but he assumes that H has recognized 'ong ha' as 'on her'. (ibid)

In other words, J misdiagnoses the source of H's problem. Unexamined, but more relevant for my purposes, are A's contributions. Earlier in Lynch, we learn that E and A are both Japanese, while H is from Spain and J is from the Faroe Islands. Reexamining the excerpt with this in mind, we see that when E says "It must be nice to travel ong ha", A, also Japanese, immediately agrees ("yes"), indicating that she understood what E was saying. Negotiation only starts when H, with a different L1 background, asks what "ong ha" means. Perhaps A did not even notice that E's pronunciation was faulty, a supposition supported by A's later attempts to move the negotiation forward by responding to H's "what's mean 'ong ha'?" with "a ship + on a ship" instead of clarifying the pronunciation. If this group were comprised of only E and A, this negotiation, like "hotchkiss", would not have been forthcoming.

2.5 Conclusion

What emerges from "ong ha" and "hotchkiss" is a realization that what works in ESL settings is unlikely to achieve similar results in EFL settings, as ELF homogeneous-L1 classes operate under different constraints. The primacy of negotiation of meaning, with its attendant purpose of providing opportunities for learners to notice gaps in their current interlanguage systems, runs aground when learners share the same L1 and their shared errors or common slips are simply not recognized as such. When these shared problems do not cause communication breakdowns, negotiation for meaning is not forthcoming.

2.5.1

This is not a claim against the value of negotiation itself in EFL settings, nor a recommendation that it be eschewed. This is simply to make the point that negotiation cannot be considered sufficient or central in addressing the systematic problems typical of EFL learners. As such, negotiation-driven teaching strategies should be approached with caution, applied with caveats, and monitored.

2.5.2

This is, however, a claim against banishing L1 from the EFL classroom on the grounds that recourse to L1 circumvents negotiation. As we saw in "barranquismo", a leniency towards limited L1 is as effective in EFL settings in promoting "noticing" if the guided negotiation, with incidental focus on form, is profitably applied. L1 proscriptions would circumvent the utility of guided negotiations, which are enhanced by limited but timely L1. The "trigger" for guided negotiation is not always a breakdown of meaning, as often the meaning can be

• supplied through L1 (whether produced intentionally or unintentionally)
• provided through the teacher's familiarity with the individual learner's interlanguage system (cf. Pica, 1996)
• provided through the teacher's knowledge of errors typical to that L1 group

With the interpretation intact, the negotiation would be in terms of encoding (i.e., a negotiation of form) with selective focus on what would be misunderstood by non-L1 speakers.

2.5.3

Furthermore, in 2.1.2, it was noted that for various reasons, student-initiated negotiations are not always forthcoming. However, teacher-initiated negotiations prompted by L1 use appear to provide both motivation and opportunity for student output. Both "hotchkiss" and "barranquismo" were supported by teachers who admitted not understanding. Perhaps more often in EFL contexts than ESL, this triggers a role reversal situation in which the instructor, despite expert knowledge of the code, willingly admits to lacking the knowledge which the rest of the participants possess. The co-construction of the exchange, with learners conveying the information and the instructors guiding/nudging the encoding, differs significantly from situations in which the onus of initiating negotiation rests with the learners.