Helping learners participate in their own language development and
shape their own path should indeed be the prime responsibility of
the classroom teacher.Moving beyond the
narrow confines of conversational adjustments such as compre-
hension checks, confirmation checks, and clarification requests,
the concept of negotiated interaction has to be extended to include
the propositional content as well as the procedural conduct of par-
ticipatory discourse.Together,
these three dimensions provide opportunities for teachers to create a
conducive atmosphere in which learners can stretch their linguistic
repertoire, sharpen their conversational capacities, and share their
individual experiences.As we have seen, interaction as a textual
activity emphasizes formal concepts, interaction as an interper-
sonal activity emphasizes conversational signals, and interaction as
an ideational activity emphasizes propositional content.Based
on the above discussion, I would like to suggest that negotiated inter-
action is a matter of coming to grips with all three-
textual, inter-personal and ideational-aspects of classroom discourse (see also,
Kumaravadivelu, 1999b).