Lakhasly

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).

Helping learners participate in their own language development and
shape their own path should indeed be the prime responsibility of
the classroom teacher. What can help the teacher in carrying out
such a responsibility is promotion of negotiated interaction. 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). 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. 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.
If our objective, as it should be, is to engage our learners in a
process of participation that puts a premium on their personal
knowledge gained from their lived experience, then we need to re-
define the concept of negotiated interaction. 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. In other words, it has to include the creation
of opportunities for the learners to share their own individual per-
spectives on issues that matter to them, and to share in a way that
makes sense to them.
In more practical terms, this means that teachers should seek
to promote negotiated interaction by yielding to the learners a
reasonable degree of control over what Allwright (1981) has called
the management of learning. In the specific context of promoting
negotiated interaction, management of learning consists chiefly of
talk management and topic management. The former may be said
to refer to the management of how participants talk, and the latter to the management of what they talk about .