EFL Learners Talking to Each Other: Task Types and the Quality of Output

Page No.: 
53
Writer(s): 
Atsuko Ushimaru, Obirin University

The notion of "comprehensible output," or language production
pushed toward the target norm ("pushed output"), is relevant in
the EFL context, where learners of English typically interact with
other learners. The study reported in this article investigated
whether interlocutors in nonnative speaker-nonnative speaker
(NNS-NNS) interactions reformulate their utterances in more
grammatical language in response to signals of incomprehension,
as they do in talking to native speakers. The study obsetved how
NNSs behave linguistically under different task conditions, with
a focus on their grammaticality, incomprehension signals, and
subsequent reformulations. It was found that pushed output does
occur to some extent in NNS-NNS interaction, but this did not
coincide with the degree of overall grammaticality.

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