SPANISH-III LEARNERS TALKING TO ONE ANOTHER THROUGH A JIGSAW TASK

The negotiation of meaning is considered an important factor in second language development. There is, as a result, a plethora of suggested activities available for learners to talk to one another in the second language. Little research exists, however, that investigates what traditional learners of foreign languages (e.g., French, German, Spanish) do with these activities in as much as the vast majority of research is generated using learners of ESL. This paper reports on a descriptive study of the conversations that transpired between eight pairs of level III high school learners of Spanish who participated in a jigsaw speaking activity. The purpose of the study was to investigate whether or not the conversations of these learners are similar to or different from those from among intermediate-level learners of ESL. The data suggest that in some ways the conversations are similar but in other ways they are different, especially considering the contextual differences in instructional settings.