Investigating Negotiation and Successful Communication in non-Native Directed Speech

Abstract

An abundance of research has been conducted on interactions between native speakers (NS) and non-native speakers (NNS), which has demonstrated that native speakers make conversational adjustments depending on whether they are speaking to a native or a non-native speaker. The intention of this study is to build upon the very small existing literature on interactions between non-native English speaking pairs and non-native directed speech in mixed pairs (NNS/NS) to investigate whether non-native speakers make conversational adjustments when interacting with native or non-native speakers. The present study examined NS/NS, NNS/NS and NNS/NNS interactions using a map task that portrayed similar and ambiguous items to encourage negotiation. The results show that the NNS/NNS pairs take the longest time to complete the map task. Mixed pairs complete the task faster than NNS/NNS and NS/NS pairs but have the lowest map accuracy of all conditions. Non-natives in the NNS/NNS condition used significantly more words than non-natives in the NNS/NS condition, which demonstrates that non-natives make conversational adjustments depending on whether they are interacting with a native or a non-native speaker.