Investigating%20the%20Empirical%20Links%20between%20Learner%20Uptake%20and%20Language%20Acquisition%20through%20Task-Based%20Interaction

1
Investigating the Empirical Links between Learner
Uptake and Language Acquisition through
Task-Based Interaction

• Wenchi Haung

2
Outline

• Introduction
• Literature Review
• Methods
• Results Discussion

3
Introduction

• All areas of education are undergoing changes and
  revolutions in the way teaching and learning are
  perceived.
• (teacher-centered ?student-centered)
• Hatch (1978) argues that interaction should come
  first, and that out of this interaction
  grammatical knowledge would develop.
• Pica (1999) mentioned that students pushed
  output during interaction can facilitate learning.

4
Statement of the Problem

• Whether the conversation or interaction is
  successful or not depends on the shared ideas
  between the interlocutors.
• The role of the teachers feedback would be
  extremely significant for students during the
  lessons.
• The way they repair and correct students may
  affect their language acquisition.

5
Purpose of the Study

• Both positive (i.e. elicitation) and negative
  (recast) feedback may turn learners attention to
  the mismatches between input and output.
• Such feedback can draw students attention to
  forms to modify their incorrect use of language.
• The purpose is to investigate what interactional
  features are beneficial and in what way it can be
  helpful.

6
Significance of the Study

• The role that learner uptake plays in students
  language acquisition.
• The application of task-based interaction. (It
  would be more suitable in EFL context.)

7
Research Questions

1. To what extend does learner uptake promote
   language acquisition through task-based
   interaction?
2. How do the four characteristics of type, source,
   complexity, and response through task-based
   interaction influence learner uptake?
3. How do the four characteristics of type, source,
   complexity, and response through task-based
   interaction influence the success of learner
   uptake?

8
Literature Review Interaction

• The development of second language emphasizes on
  the role of negotiated interaction between native
  and non-native speakers and between two NNSs
  (Gass, 2003).
• Interaction facilitates comprehension better than
  learning conditions without the interaction
  component (Gass Varonis, 1994 Loschky, 1994).

9
Literature Review Uptake

• It is a student move during interaction.
• The move is optional.
• The uptake move occurs in conversations where
  learners have demonstrated a gap in their
  knowledge.
• The uptake move occurs as a reaction to some
  preceding move in which another interlocutor
  either explicitly or implicitly provides
  information about a linguistic feature (Ellis et
  al., 2001).

10
Example

• S Hows your weekend?
• T Just fine. How about you?
• S Great! I go to the cinema.
• T Oh, you went to the cinema. So what did you
  see?
• S Oh yes (noticing)I went to see Transformers.

11
Literature Review Uptake

• Only 23 of uptake may occur in relation to
  teachers feedback (Lyster Ranta, 1997).
• In Ellis (2001) study, however, about 75 of
  uptake may occur in response to teachers
  feedback.

12
Literature Review TBLT

• TBLT views the leaning process as a set of
  communicative and interactive tasks.
• Pica et al. (1993) proposed that the most
  effective tasks in terms of generating
  negotiation of meaning are information-gap and
  jigsaw tasks, while the least effective is the
  opinion-expressing task.

13
Method

• The Teaching Context
• A public elementary school in Taiwan.
• One English teacher is in charge of one whole
  grade of classes.
• The purpose of my research will be introduced to
  them briefly, but not the focus and procedure.
• Students have English classes twice a week, and
  each class has forty minutes.

14
Method

• Participants
• five intact classes which include 170 students,
  and all of them are sixth-graders.
• All of the students have learned English since
  they were at the first grade (school policy).
• One full-time English teacher with formal license
  for English teaching.
• Her teaching experience is about five years.

15
Method

• Procedure
• The researcher was present during all instruction
  and observation as a non-participant observer.
• The video-recording can capture the verbal,
  non-verbal, T-S, and S-S interaction.
• The observer would take some notes about the
  students. (As there is only one recorder.)

16
Method

• Procedure
• Afterward, the structured observation sheet was
  used to critically identify the characteristics
  of participants interaction.

17
Method

• Instrument Tool
• Video-recorder to record the verbal and
  non-verbal interaction during the task.
• Audio-recorder (supplementary) to overcome the
  problem of students noise in the classroom. (In
  the future study)

18
Observation scheme

• The scheme that the researcher had observed
  employs a sign or category system.
• The observation scheme requires the documentation
  of high inference behavior which necessitates the
  observer to interpret the behaviors they record.
• The observation scheme allows a particular event
  to be assigned to more than one categories or
  event.

19
Identification of the communicative dialogues

• Communicative dialogues
• Discourse from the point where the attention to
  linguistic form starts to the point where it
  ends, due to a change in topic back to message or
  sometimes another focus on form (Loewen, 2004).

20
Coding of communicative dialogues

• An observation sheet modified by Ellis et al.
  (2001) and Loewen (2004) will be applied.
• Another graduate students will be invited to
  interpret the communicative dialogues to avoid
  the situation of being subjective.
• Kappa Coefficient

21
Data analysis

• Quantitative approach
• The raw frequency data were subjected to
  Pearsons Chi-square tests with the Statistical
  Package for the Social Science (SPSS 15.0).
• The emphases will be put on the characteristics
  of type, source, complexity and response.

22
Response

• Provide
• Inform direct correction
• Recast reformulation of a students utterance
• Elicit
• Clarification Request Sorry? Huh?
• Repeat Repetition of students answer
• Elicit Solution More explanation elaboration

23
Frequency of uptake
Frequency of uptake Percent
Uptake 257 75.1
-Successful 190 73.9
-Unsuccessful 67 26.1
No uptake 85 24.9
Total 342 100.0
24
Discussion

• Based on the recording evidence, learner uptake
  through task-based interaction did occur at the
  rate of 75 (ranging from 58 to 88).
• Compared with the study by Lyster and Ranta
  (1997) with the rate of 23, learner uptake
  appeared to play positive role on language
  acquisition through task-based interaction.

25
Discussion

• Uptake was notably higher and more successful in
  Reactive interaction than in Teacher-Initiated
  Student-initiated interaction.
• Reactive interaction reached a higher level of
  successful uptake(74.8) than Teacher-Initiated
  (55) Student-Initiated interaction (71.4).
• The complex communicative dialogues also led to
  more uptake than the simple communicative
  dialogues.

26
Discussion

• The four focused characteristics that proved
  important for the overall quantity of uptake also
  influenced the degree to which the uptake was
  successful.
• The response provided by the teacher may play the
  most dominant role in contributing learner
  uptake, even successful uptake in this study.
• Elicit resulted in a relatively high level of
  successful uptake (78.8 of total uptake).

27
Potential Problems encountered and Proposed
Solutions

• The familiarity with the students
• The order of the whole class
• Regular approach vs. Task-based interaction
• Quantitative statistics

28
Thank you for attention