چکیده:
This classroom-based study sets out to study the relationships that EFL learners would form in peer responses in an EFL writing class. It examines Storch’s (2002a) patterns of peer interaction when intermediate learners are paired with partners of different L2 proficiency levels. To discover the factors that could affect the nature of peer interactions, at first a proficiency test of TOEFL was administered and thus the participants were distinguished based on their scores, into the beginner, intermediate, and advanced levels. Further, the participants were asked to choose a partner and review each other’s writing in pair while being audio recorded. To examine learners’ behaviors from the perspective of participants involved, they were interviewed individually after the recording session. As the focus was on intermediate partnership, the data of 12 intermediate students (i.e. 6 pairs) interacting with an advanced, intermediate or beginner partner were analyzed. The findings showed that although proficiency levels narrowly affected the participants’ performances in peer responses, they did not determine them. The study revealed that it is not just the actual proficiency levels but the relationships that learners form, the roles that they adopt, and their partner’s behaviors as the factors which shape the dyadic talk. It was further found that the partners’ roles are shaped by their positioning in relation to their peers and the issues on which learners focus during their engagement in the task.
خلاصه ماشینی:
"It examines Storch’s (2002a) patterns of peer interaction when intermediate learners are paired with partners of different L2 proficiency levels.
In Yule and Macdonald's (1990) study of peer interactions, communication was strongly influenced by whether the high- or low-proficiency learner was cast in the dominant role for the task.
The present study attempts to find out which patterns of interaction are present in intermediate EFL students paired with partners having similar or different language proficiency levels when engaged in peer reviews.
More specifically, the purpose of the present study is to explore patterns of dyadic interaction between intermediate learners paired with partners of different (L2) proficiency levels in an EFL writing classroom.
To better understand how students experienced the interaction that they had been assigned, the researchers focused on how participants explained their pair work, how they characterized their spoken interactions with their partners, and how they felt about the task and feedback they received.
The results of the first research question, the patterns of dyadic interaction that were found between intermediate learners paired with partners with different foreign language (L2) proficiency levels are tabulated below (Table 2).
A number of individual learner factors have been proposed to explain why learners form different relationships when working in small groups or pairs, whether on collaborative writing tasks or in peer response activities.
Effects of proficiency differences and patterns of pair interaction on second language learning: Collaborative dialogue between adult ESL learners."