HOW DO LEARNERS PERCEIVE INTERACTIONAL FEEDBACK?

TLDR

The Interaction Hypothesis posits that negotiated interaction facilitates second‑language acquisition, yet the extent to which learners perceive and are affected by feedback during such interaction remains contested. This study investigates how learners perceive interactional feedback. Ten English‑L2 and seven Italian‑FL learners engaged in task‑based dyadic interaction, received morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological feedback, and later reviewed videotapes of their interactions to introspect on their in‑situ perceptions. Results revealed that learners accurately perceived lexical, semantic, and phonological feedback, but generally failed to recognize morphosyntactic feedback, with the nature and content of the feedback influencing their perceptions.

Abstract

Theoretical claims about the benefits of conversational interaction have been made by Gass (1997), Long (1996), Pica (1994), and others. The Interaction Hypothesis suggests that negotiated interaction can facilitate SLA and that one reason for this could be that, during interaction, learners may receive feedback on their utterances. An interesting issue, which has challenged interactional research, concerns how learners perceive feedback and whether their perceptions affect their subsequent L2 development. The present research addresses the first of these issues–learners' perceptions about interactional feedback. The study, involving 10 learners of English as a second language and 7 learners of Italian as a foreign language, explores learners' perceptions about feedback provided to them through task-based dyadic interaction. learners received feedback focused on a range of morphosyntactic, lexical, and phonological forms. After completing the tasks, learners watched videotapes of their previous interactions and were asked to introspect about their thoughts at the time the original interactions were in progress. The results showed that learners were relatively accurate in their perceptions about lexical, semantic, and phonological feedback. However, morphosyntactic feedback was generally not perceived as such. Furthermore, the nature as well as the content of the feedback may have affected learners' perceptions.