Submitted by jfalkowska on 15 October, 2014 - 13:52.
Professor Pauline Foster
St Mary’s University
Twickenham, London
Interactive foreign language classrooms: what is the place of teacher-talk?
Michael Long's Interaction Hypothesis (1996) argues that interaction is supportive of, even central to, development in foreign languages. This idea has been enormously influential in both second language acquisition research, and language teaching. In this talk, I will first look at the genesis of Long’s model in Krashen’s “Input Hypothesis” (1982) and then review the empirical work which has been based on it, arguing that Long’s theoretical account has been modified and diluted in the process, particularly in the shift from the importance of “negotiating meaning” at moments of L2 communication failure to asking questions at moments of interactional success (Mackey 2007). I will also review the perceived role of interaction in language classrooms, and the concomitant devaluation of other kinds of classroom activities which this can entail. I will argue that there is not sufficient evidence for us to say that a language learner who is not actively interacting is not learning anything useful. I will end by observing that, unfortunately, teacher trainers’ and inspectors’ enthusiasm for classroom interaction can lead them to downgrade methodologies in which teacher talk or silent study plays more than a minimal role. As a consequence non-interactive choices in language teaching are at an unfair and unproven disadvantage when it comes to evaluating 'best practice'.
Monday, 20 October at 11:30, Room 601A
