To contribute to existing research that describes how L2 speakers avoid misunderstanding during conversation, the current study examines the strategies used by university students in Canada. The students (N = 104) were audio-recorded while carrying out two communicative tasks in pairs: exchanging personal experiences about moving to Canada, and…

This article reviews patterns of interaction (i.e. learner role relationships) in peer communicative tasks, and uses data collected from different tasks to explain what happens in peer interaction and its impact on the learning opportunities interlocutors create for each other. It proposes that, with L2 peer interaction gaining popularity in…

The English as a lingua franca (ELF) and languaging research areas have challenged the norm that the goal of ELT is to teach a standardized language. This article reports on a course following the principles of ELF and languaging where the goal is to support students to use and grow their existing repertoire of resources to do things in English.…

"Changing English" aims to illustrate the diversity of English in the world today and to ask whether, and how, ELT practitioners might accommodate such variation. Focusing on a particular language issue in each article, the series will explore how English varies between places and spaces, over time, and between groups of speakers. and…

Intermediate learners of English often show considerable skill in communicating orally, and using language productively to solve the tasks set. However, on closer inspection, the actual language produced is often very simple and contributes little to students' language growth. The present article reports on a small-scale pedagogic intervention…

This article reports on an investigation into how learners in a British EFL setting perceive the classroom practice of student-student interaction and why it is perceived in these ways. Adopting qualitative non-experimental methods, I first explored issues leading to the concept of "usefulness" and identified factors that appeared to…

This paper describes a study comparing chatroom and face-to-face oral interaction for the purposes of language learning in a tertiary classroom in the United Arab Emirates. It uses transcripts analysed for Language Related Episodes, collaborative dialogues, thought to be externally observable examples of noticing in action. The analysis is…

Brazil's system of discourse intonation (DI) is critically appraised, and some shortcomings are described. Modifications to DI are suggested, the most important being to recognize that tones have meanings derived from two functions: firstly to indicate the distribution of knowledge between speaker and listener--the analysis of tone in yes/no…

English language teaching tends to deal with the pleasanter side of second-language interaction such as making friends, relating experiences, and expressing likes/dislikes while ignoring such everyday communicative realities as rudeness, disrespect, and impoliteness. While neglected in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) classroom,…

Summarizes some preliminary findings from research into the nature and effect of various discourse modifications by a native speaker to a language learner. These modifications include (1) idiom avoidance; (2) comprehension checks and pauses; and (3) selection of information. An informal experiment gauging foreign students' impression of…