VOCABULARY NEGOTIATION IN THE KFL CLASSROOM: LANGUAGE LEARNING OPPORTUNITIES THROUGH INTERACTION

Abstract

Using the micro-analytic framework of conversation analysis, this study demonstrates Korean language learners' varying repair strategies when facing vocabulary production problems. The purpose of this study is twofold: (1) to explore the ways in which Korean L2 learners co-construct repair sequences for vocabulary negotiation and (2) to advance our understanding of how learning opportunities are created in Korean as a Foreign Language (KFL) classroom interaction. The data analyzed for this study are drawn from approximately nineteen hours of Korean as a second language classroom conversations, involving seven students and a teacher. It specifically investigates the various organizations of repair by two different language proficiency levels: advanced and intermediate. Analysis of moment-by-moment classroom interaction reveals that advanced and intermediate learners show different preferences and utilize repair sequences in differing ways in order to negotiate target vocabulary with interactants. Participants in the interaction move back and forth between the ongoing talk and the repair sequence and collaboratively resolve their problems in ways that create opportunities for learning. The analysis of these practices of "vocabulary negotiation" adds to a body of work that shows how students participate in building their own learning opportunities.