Is SLA Interactionist Theory Relevant to CALL? A Study on the Effects of Computer-Mediated Interaction in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

1. INTRODUCTIONAccording to interactionist approaches to SLA (Hatch, 1978; Long, 1996),interaction is the most important way in which learners obtain data forlanguage learning. In his most recent version of the Interaction Hypothesistheory, Long (1996) claims that interactive tasks that promote negotiation ofmeaning among learners can facilitate the development of a second language.Negotiation is often product of interactional exchanges where communicationbreakdowns take place. Normally the learner receives interactionally modifiedinput, and s/he is also pushed to produce interactionally modified output(Swain, 1985). In this process, learners notice certain input features, andcompare them with their own output. This noticing (Schmidt, 1990, 1994,1995) has to be present for the input to become ‘intake’. The role ofnegotiation in these exchanges would be that of allowing conscious noticing(Schmidt, 1994, 1996), required to transform input into intake.Likewise, research on SLA conducted from a sociocultural framework,especially that originated under a vygotskyan framework (Vygotsky, 1978),and applied to SLA by Lantolf (2000) among others, also underscorescollaborative learning as paramount to second language acquisition (Otha,1995, 1997, 2000; Swain, 1995, 2000), and emphasizes the importance oflearner-learner meaningful interaction, and especially what Swain (2000) calls‘‘collaborative dialogue’’ for interlanguage development.

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