Learner age/level moderates the benefit of negotiation of meaning: high school learners relied on it more than college learners¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 2013 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Negotiation of meaning benefited comprehensible input only in high school groups, while vocabulary-score benefits appeared at both levels; the authors interpret this as younger learners relying more on negotiation. → Baoshu Yi & Zhinong Sun 2013

Evidence¶

Baoshu Yi & Zhinong Sun 2013¶

Baoshu Yi & Zhinong Sun. (2013). An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of Negotiation of Meaning in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition of Chinese Learners of English. English Language Teaching, 6(10). https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v6n10p120

q3 · i? · causal · r1

Cross-group comparison across the two samples in the Discussion: high school participants showed a significant comprehensible-input advantage from negotiation, while college groups showed none, though college experimental learners still outperformed controls on vocabulary.

"the participants from the high school seem to rely more on negotiation of mean ing than the college counterparts do with a view to attaining comprehensible input since no difference is fo und in comprehensible input between the experimental group and the control group from the college"

Discussion¶

Learner Variables¶

• Age and Developmental Stage — moderator: an instructional effect differs with it

Related Claims¶

• Conversational interaction facilitates second language grammatical development in adult ESL learners — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
• In both high school and college groups, learners with negotiation of meaning scored higher on the delayed post-vocabulary test than learners with pre-modified input only — related
• In high school groups, learners with negotiation of meaning obtained more comprehensible input in the match task than learners with pre-modified input only — related
• In college groups, negotiation of meaning made no difference to comprehensible input obtained in the match task — related
• In college groups, no correlation was found between frequency of negotiation of meaning and vocabulary score — related
• Young developing readers rely more heavily on semantic and syntactic information for word-level analysis than adult readers, per Schwantes' study — a broader claim this one bears on
• In high school groups, frequency of negotiation of meaning correlates positively with vocabulary score (r = 0.761) and with comprehensible input (r = 0.310) — related
• Negotiated interaction yields higher moment-to-moment comprehension of L2 input than either noninteraction condition, which do not differ from each other — related
• School level moderates the correlation non-linearly, with grades 7–12 showing the most negative correlation — related
• The learner's developmental level conditions the outcomes of interactional input — a broader claim this one bears on
• Vocabulary instruction should focus on procedures of meaning negotiation as much as on declarative word meanings — related