Conversational interaction facilitates second language grammatical development in adult ESL learners¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · causal r1 · q3
Currency · newest study 1999 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

Reading the evidence codes

q is the design tier, i the impact, n the sample, and the kind with its r the rigour judged within that kind: what each code means.

This claim: no standardized effect is recorded in observations/ for it yet, so no benchmark reading is possible.

q3 i? Task-based conversational interaction supported grammatical development (question formation) in adult ESL learners relative to no interaction. → Alison Mackey 1999

Evidence¶

Alison Mackey 1999¶

Alison Mackey. (1999). INPUT, INTERACTION, AND SECOND LANGUAGE DEVELOPMENT: An Empirical Study of Question Formation in ESL. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21(4). https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263199004027

q3 · i? · causal · r1

Pretest-posttest experiment with 34 adult ESL learners of varying L1 backgrounds assigned to four experimental groups and one control group taking part in task-based interaction. The article reports that "Results of this studysupport claims concerning a link between interaction and grammatical development"; no effect size is printed.

"The central question addressed by the current study was: Can conversational interaction facilitate second language development? The study employed a pretest-posttest design. Adult ESL learners ( N =34) of varying L1 backgrounds were divided into four experimental groups and one control group."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Does negotiated interaction help learners acquire the second language, beyond helping them understand the input at the moment? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 13 narrower claims that bear on it: 5 distinct studies (3 causal, 1 quant-synthesis, 1 review), q2–q3, 1 of 5 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Study	Design	Effect as recorded	Bears on this claim through
Alison Mackey 1999	q3 · causal · r1	i?	this claim
Nicole Ziegler 2016	q3 · quant-synthesis · r?	i?	Interaction in both SCMC and FTF contexts has a significant impact on L2 development (meta (supports)
Baoshu Yi & Zhinong Sun 2013	q3 · causal · r1	i?; i3	In both high school and college groups, learners with negotiation of meaning scored higher (supports); In high school groups, frequency of negotiation of meaning correlates positively with voca (supports); In high school groups, learners with negotiation of meaning obtained more comprehensible i (supports); In college groups, negotiation of meaning made no difference to comprehensible input obtai (qualifies); In college groups, no correlation was found between frequency of negotiation of meaning an (qualifies); Learner age/level moderates the benefit of negotiation of meaning: high school learners re (qualifies)
Lester Loschky 1994	q3 · causal · r?	i?	Negotiated interaction yields higher moment-to-moment comprehension of L2 input than eithe (supports); Differences in moment-to-moment comprehension do not correlate with gains in vocabulary re (qualifies); All three input/interaction conditions produced significant gains in vocabulary recognitio (qualifies)
Ellis 1991	q2 · review · r2	i?	Comprehensible input alone is insufficient for acquisition of high levels of grammatical p (qualifies); Interactionally modified input aids comprehension but shows no advantage for retention amo (qualifies); Interactionally adjusted and premodified input yield statistically comparable comprehensio (qualifies)

Discussion¶

Discussion promotes more active thinking than lecture, though lecture is no worse for transmitting information — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it
Active participation in interaction matters for second language developmental outcomes — related
Conversational interaction may facilitate acquisition of some grammatical structures but not others — related
Comprehensible input alone is insufficient for acquisition of high levels of grammatical proficiency — related
Informal evidence that adults do not automatically process input to develop competence reopens the role of grammar instruction (as reported by the bibliography, citing Terrell) — related
Interaction in both SCMC and FTF contexts has a significant impact on L2 development (meta-analysis of 14 studies, 1990–2012) — a broader claim this one bears on
Negotiated interaction yields higher moment-to-moment comprehension of L2 input than either noninteraction condition, which do not differ from each other — related
A 1999 conference paper reports, citing Ellis and LaPorte (1997), that instruction has little or no effect on the route of L2 acquisition — related

Page metadata

Field	Value
`type`	`claim`
`id`	`interaction-facilitates-l2-grammatical-development`
`title`	`Conversational interaction facilitates second language grammatical development in adult ESL learners`
`description`	`Conversational interaction facilitates second language grammatical development in adult ESL learners`
`status`	`review`
`evidence_strength`	`moderate`
`newest_evidence`	`1999`
`generated`	by `process:wiki-ingest` on `2026-10-14`
`trust`	unverified — no one has confirmed this page's content
`sources`	1 — `alison-mackey-1999`

Frontmatter is the page's machine-readable record — see the Schema & Guide.