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Many teachers follow a communicative approach to language teaching to allow their students to practice what they are learning.Their students may also have negative views of peer interaction.Bringing language skills together in this way connects the language that learners hear and say with their internal cognitive capacities for attending to language, noticing features of the input, and forming hypotheses about language use (Swain, 2005).The interactionist approach (Gass & Mackey, 2006), for example, explains that when language learners are engaged in meaningful communication in a second language, they are able to focus on meaning, negotiate to make input comprehensible, and try out new language forms as they produce language. Similarly, sociocultural approaches to language teaching point out that in interaction, learners receive help (from their interlocutor) while producing language, allowing them to express ideas they could not put into words on their own.In interactions with skilled language teachers, they also obtain expert scaffolding (assistance with words or grammar) to help them express meanings they cannot formulate on their own.As such, interaction is a mini-laboratory for language use - allowing learners to make discoveries about their new language as they use it to communicate their ideas.Current theories of language teaching and learning underscore this point.

Many teachers follow a communicative approach to
language teaching to allow their students to practice
what they are learning. However, experts also believe
that that communicative practice is integral to language
learning. In this viewpoint, the main part of learning a
language is not being explicitly taught vocabulary or
grammar, but learning these implicitly through making
sense of what we hear and read, and putting our ideas
into words in what we say and write (Long, 2014). Current
theories of language teaching and learning underscore
this point. The interactionist approach (Gass & Mackey,
2006), for example, explains that when language learners
are engaged in meaningful communication in a second
language, they are able to focus on meaning, negotiate
to make input comprehensible, and try out new language
forms as they produce language. Bringing language skills
together in this way connects the language that learners
hear and say with their internal cognitive capacities for
attending to language, noticing features of the input, and
forming hypotheses about language use (Swain, 2005).
As such, interaction is a mini-laboratory for language
use – allowing learners to make discoveries about their
new language as they use it to communicate their ideas.
Similarly, sociocultural approaches to language teaching
point out that in interaction, learners receive help (from
their interlocutor) while producing language, allowing
them to express ideas they could not put into words on
their own. This stretches their own linguistic resources,
building their language competence (Donato, 1994).
It’s clear how interacting with an expert speaker or teacher
can help students learn – they will hear correct models of
language use and may also receive reliable feedback on
their language use. In interactions with skilled language
teachers, they also obtain expert scaffolding (assistance with
words or grammar) to help them express meanings they
cannot formulate on their own. What is sometimes surprising
to teachers and learners is that interaction with another
peer in the classroom, who is also in the process of learning
the second language, can also be helpful for learning a
language. Teachers may worry about the effects of peer
interactions, concerned that students provide each other
with imperfect language input, or do not provide feedback
on crucial language errors. They may also have seen their
students get stuck, unable to communicate effectively
without help from a more competent speaker, or simply
revert to speaking their first language together (particularly
in foreign language learning classrooms where most
learners share a common language). They may see a limited
role for peer interaction as a way of practicing language
use, but not as a means of language learning. Their students
may also have negative views of peer interaction. They
may be reticent to speak and make mistakes in front of
their peers or they may not believe that they can learn
from their peers, preferring teacher-led instruction.
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