Abstract:
The current study examined the modification devices (MDs)
used by male and female non-native speakers (NNSs) learning
EFL during dyadic task-based interactions. Three meaningoriented
tasks, namely picture-description, spot-the-difference,
and opinion-exchange, were used to elicit data from 24 (12
male and 12 female, forming 4 male-male, 4 female-female,
and 4 male-female dyads) Iranian (Azeri-speaking) EFL
learners with intermediate language proficiency in English as
L3. All interactions were video-taped and transcribed. For the
sake of systematicity, only the first 150 sentences of
transcribed data were analyzed to assess the effect of
interlocutor’s gender on the usage of different types of
modification devices using Mackey et al.’s (2003) model. The
findings revealed that ‘confirmation check’ was the device
mostly used by both genders. The results also demonstrated
that ‘clarification check’ was the most frequently used strategy
for negotiation among the students regardless of their gender.
Analyses of the data propose that these modification devices
facilitate comprehension of input and output and enhance the
negotiation for both meaning and form. Further results and
implications are discussed in the paper.
Machine summary:
"Various studies have investigated the use of interactional moves in interactions of learners to find out whether learners are able to provide some linguistic feedback to other learners and most of them have found that the use of MDs have different advantages such as increasing syntactization, improving grammatical accuracy and pronunciation in the interactions of adult non-natives (Iwashita, 2001, 1999; Lee, 2002; Shehadeh, 1999), of child non-natives (Mackey & Oliver, 2002) and of non-natives with natives (Iwashita, 2003).
Although the developmental effects of feedback were not investigated in the present study, the achieved results do show that participation in task-based interactions can provide learners in NNS-NNS dyads with exposure to feedback in theoretically sufficient amounts, and they support claims regarding the importance of feedback as one of the benefits of interaction (Behnam & Davaribina, 2011; Gass, 1997; Long, 1996; Shehadeh, 2001; Swain, 1995).
The main purpose of the study was to examine the extent to which these male and female students with intermediate level of proficiency in the EFL context provide opportunities for their interlocutors to modify their output toward comprehensibility and what types of negotiation moves they use while interacting.
Moreover, while this research found that there is no significant difference between male and female EFL learners in their use of modification devices during dyadic task-based interactions, it did not focus on the major types of errors language learners of different genders produce."