Interlanguage Development of Spanish Learners: Comprehension, Production, and Interaction

Abstract

This study explores the relationship between group interaction and interlanguage development, specifically listening comprehension and the production of target grammar forms. Two groups (39 participants in total) of first-semester Spanish students at an American university took notes on a mini-lecture, then completed a text reconstruction and listening comprehension test. The experimental group (n = 18) interactively shared notes for five minutes in small groups; the control group (n = 21) did not interact, although students were allowed to study their notes for five minutes. The experimental group scored significantly higher (p = 0.001) on the listening comprehension task. The recorded interactions, analyzed quantitatively and qualitatively, revealed significant differences between the interaction groups in the amount and types of L2 words used in the joint construction of knowledge. Quantitative analysis, conducted by means of a customized computer program that identified and counted target linguistic forms, facilitated ready comparison across interaction groups through innovative analytic techniques. This study shows that interaction may have an effect on listening comprehension and suggests that the different ways in which learners interact may explain this effect.

The Contribution of Collaborative and Individual Tasks to the Acquisition of L2 Vocabulary

“…Even though results from the Storch (1999) and Garcia and Asención (2001) studies provided partial support for the benefits of collaborative tasks, Kuiken and Vedder (2002) reported contrary findings. They employed a pretest–posttest design to explore whether collaborative and individual tasks facilitated the acquisition of the passive form by 34 Dutch high school learners.…”

“…As Williams (2001) noted, without a control group (i.e., learners who complete an individual task), the relationship between the test results and the collaborative tasks is still in need of further investigation. Studies to date that have compared individual and collaborative task performance (Garcia & Asención, 2001; Kuiken & Vedder, 2002; Storch, 1999) have focused on the acquisition of grammar features, quality of students' writing samples, or listening comprehension.…”

“…Garcia and Asención (2001) also compared the results of listening comprehension tasks and production of new grammar forms by an interaction group ( n = 18) and a noninteraction group ( n = 21). The learners completed a pretest, one dictogloss activity, and a listening test over a 3‐week period.…”

The Role of Output, Input Enhancement and Collaborative Output in the Acquisition of English Passive Forms

“…One reason can be that both groups received the same amount of time (i.e. thirty minutes) in performing the tasks while in previous studies (Storch, 1999;Garcia & Asencion, 2001) pair groups had more time than individual groups. Another reason might be related to the nature of the interaction that took place during pair work.…”

“…A number of studies reported the effective role of collaboration on various aspects of second language learning (Lapkin, Swain & Smith, 2002 Storch, 1999Storch, , 2005. Among them, Storch (1999) and Garcia and Asencion (2001) supported partially the benefits of collaborative tasks. Therefore, due to scarcity of studies conducted on the comparison of collaborative versus individual output tasks, this study also aims to fill this gap by comparing two groups of learners working on the enhanced text and editing task in collaboration and individually.…”