The effect of mixing proficiency levels on th Englishas a foreign language learners' speech

Abstract

Having students of different proficiency levels in the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class is an issue of concern for many teachers who often reflect on whether it is better to group students of the same or different proficiency levels. Four different patterns of interaction among foreign language learner dyads were identified by Storch (2001): the collaborative pattern, in which both learners share their knowledge and assist each other; dominant/dominant pairs, who are unwilling or incapable to engage with each other‘s ideas; dominant/passive pairs, in which the dominant member takes control of the task in an authoritarian way; and expert/novice pairs, in which the expert encourages the novice to participate in the task. The author found that more instances of knowledge transfer occurred in the pairs with a collaborative orientation. In this study, 20 Spanish university students were paired by their proficiency level of English, and were asked to work collaboratively while planning an oral task. The aim was to investigate whether pairing combined proficiency learners was conducive to foreign language (FL) learning when ―pushing‖ them to work collaboratively. The dyads were administered a picture set and were required to plan how to narrate the story together during 15 minutes. They were told that, after planning, they would perform the task individually and separately. Results showed that ―pushing‖ learners to follow the collaborative pattern of interaction yielded quite similar oral productions within the dyads, and therefore, this might be lead to FL learning. We conclude that the presence of different proficiency levels in the EFL class may have important pedagogical implications.