Peer Interaction In College EFL Debating Class

As a distinct type of interaction,peer interaction is completely different from interaction between native speakers and learners,between teachers and students.Peer interaction is often described as any communicative activity carried out between learners while there is minimal or no participation from the teacher.According to research on peer interaction in literature to date,peer interaction is advocated by major theories of second language learning and research findings suggest that peer interaction could facilitate second language(L2)learning.But what is unclear is how to make the most of peer interaction in authentic L2 classrooms.Thus the central focus of the current research is to explore the most efficient interactional patterns among peers in a L2 context.Recently,an ongoing new trend of student-oriented classrooms in the world has drew a growing body of research's interests in learner-learner interaction.Research on peer interaction can be dated back to early 1980s.However,compared to other types of interaction(e.g.,teacher-student interaction),peer interaction has gained much less attention and studies on its nature and strength to language learning is/are also rather fewer.With the above consideration,this research examines the unique role of peer interaction in L2 classrooms.It is designed to present:(1)the identification of interactional patterns among peers in an L2 classroom;(2)an in-depth investigation of the efficiency of interactional patterns regarding language learning and task completion;and(3)an exploration of variables affecting the emergence of interactional patterns among peers.The current study is classroom-based and adopts a mixed research method.It is conducted among 24 English major sophomores in a university of foreign studies in China.All the 24 participants who attended the same debating class have been recruited to take part in the current research for 8 weeks.In the 8-week observation,participants were grouped randomly into small groups of four and their interactional performances in small-group activities are audiotaped every week for 8 times.In the end,48 copies are collected(6 groups*1 task*8 weeks).Besides,after 8 weeks'observation,8 core learners have been invited to participate in later individual interviews.Based on the above research method.this study firstly investigates the interactional patterns during small-group interaction in college English debating classrooms.After transcribing the interactional data and quantifying it in terms of equality and mutuality,the current research has identified 4 patterns of small-group interaction.They are collaborative pattern(high in both equality and mutuality),dominant/passive pattern(low in both equality and mutuality),alternate pattern(high in equality but low mutuality)and expert/novice(low in equality but high in mutuality).It then explores the efficiency of peer interaction with regard to LREs and different types of utterances in task completion.Since previous research has indicated that language-related episodes(henceforth LREs)can provide learning opportunities for language learners and learners were able to gain new knowledge from triggering and/or solving LREs,this research explores the efficiency of small-group interaction across interactional patterns by examining the production of LREs.In other words,it examines how LREs production would be influenced by different interactional patterns.The frequency of LREs under different interactional patterns was counted respectively and the means were also computed.Through one-way ANOVA analysis,the results have suggested that there is statistically significant relationship between interactional patterns and the production of LREs in small-group activities(p=0.001).The mean of LREs generated under expert/novice patterns is the highest,followed by dominant/passive patterns,collaborative patterns and alternate patterns.This study then discusses the efficiency of different patterns in terms of content of talk during task completion.Utterances in small-group interaction are classified into three types based on the content of talk,including on-task talk,about-task talk and off-task talk.The total number of each type under the four patterns was counted by words.Then the proportion of each type of talk was calculated.The results shows that different small-group patterns differed in off-task talk and learners working in collaborative and expert/novice patterns produced least off-task talk.But there is no statistical difference in on-task talk or about-task talk.Therefore,collaborative and expert/novice patterns were more efficient compared the other two.The current study finally investigates core learners' perception of peer interaction and the interview results show that the 8 learners are unanimously positive about peer interaction whilst vary in the preference of group members.This study is presented as an initial exploration of peer interaction in college EFL classrooms.The findings might shed light on the organization of peers to carry out debate tasks to best facilitate L2 learning.