Conversational interaction Archive

Second Language Learners’ Perception of Feedback by Susan Gass, University Distinguished Professor English Language Center, Michigan State University Theoretical claims for the benefits of conversational interaction have been made by Gass (1977) among others.  The interaction hypothesis suggests that negotiated interaction can facilitate SLA.  This may be because these interactional features function as implicit negative…

Symbolic competence (Kramsch, 2009, 2011) has been proposed as a crucial addition to world language learning, as it enables a language learner to negotiate the complex symbolism of words, expressions, and discursive events from the target culture in order to reference them effectively and in the appropriate contexts. However, fostering symbolic competence is still a challenge within the day to day reality of the world language classroom. Moreover, there is still little research on what symbolic competence looks like in interaction. In this article I examine a peer tutoring context as one possibility for examining symbolic competence in interaction. Using a close discourse analysis ...