Using computer based exploratory talk to encourage secondary school students' oral interaction

Abstract

Several studies have investigated the main communicative problems of students engaged in collaborative tasks. Likewise, computer-based activities have been proved successful at stimulating effective talk among L1-English primary-school learners (L1). However, research on learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) is still limited comparatively. Inspired in the communicative activity defined by Fisher (1992) as Exploratory Talk, this study intends to analyse the effects of computer-based communicative tasks in EFL students in order to determine whether they encourage oral interaction, and the type and amount of Negotiation of Meaning (NoM) and L1 use it might generate. The study was conducted with eight students, separated in four dyads, belonging to the 3rd year of the Compulsory Second ary Education high school in Pamplona, Navarre. The four dyads participated in two different communicative tasks. In the first task learners had to perform a Cambridge picture-describing task while on the second they had to complete an interactive narrative designed to elicit exploratory talk. Data for the study was collected by means of audio-recorded oral interaction. It was subsequently transcribed and coded according to Oliver’s classification of NoM strategies (1998). Results indicate that computer-based Exploratory Talk task increases interaction between students as regards the number of turns carried out by each dyad and generated a higher number of instances of L1 use. However, a poor number of conversational adjustments reveals that there are no significant alterations between task in terms of NoM.