Negotiation and Power in a Child's Second Language Learning

Abstract

This study explores a child"s interactional management of negotiation process in an L2 tutoring setting. Specifically, it examines the causes of negotiation, consequences that power alignment brings to L2 learning, and the tutor"s evaluations of the tutee"s L2 development and participation. The data include more than 200 minutes of audio-recording of three ESL tutoring sessions which an ESL tutor and a five-year-old tutee participate in and post-tutoring interviews with the tutor. The analyses identified two types of negotiation that the participants were engaged in: didactic and conversational negotiation. The tutee was found to take more powerful position when he was engaged in the conversation-oriented, meaning. negotiation than in the didactic, linguistic negotiation. While actively managing negotiation for conversation, he was able to effectively relate the target of the negotiational interaction to his own prior knowledge as the owner of his learning. These findings indicate that effectiveness of tutoring as a learning environment needs to be addressed in terms of the effectiveness of meaning negotiation and power distribution.