No abstract

This study examines the role self-and other-initiations play in providing opportunities for modified output (MO), which Swain (1995, 1998) and Swain and Lapkin (1995) suggest is important for successful second language acquisition. Thirty-five adult participants-8 native speakers (NSs) and 27 nonnative speakers (NNSs) of English representing 13 different L1 backgrounds-performed three tasks (picture description, opinion exchange, and decision making). The first two tasks were performed in NS-NNS and NNS-NNS pairs and were audiotaped, and the third was completed in NNS groups and was audio-and videotaped. The results showed that both self-and other-initiations provided NNSs with abundant opportunities to produce MO. However, in four of the five interactional contexts examined in the study, significantly more instances of MO resulted from self-initiation than from other-initiation. These results suggest that self-initiations play an important role in prompting MO and that learners need both time and opportunity to initiate and complete repair of their own messages.

This study investigated the ability of NNSs to modify their output toward comprehensibility in the contexts of NS-NNS and NNS-NNS interactions and the degree to which such modified comprehensible output (MCO) was other-or self-initiated. Picture-dictation and opinionexchange tasks were used to collect data from 8 NSs and 24 NNSs of English representing 13 different L1 backgrounds. The 2 tasks were performed in pairs (NS-NNS and NNS-NNS) and were audiotaped. The results showed that most repairs were self-initiated and that NNS-NNS interactions produced more other-initiations and otherinitiated MCOs on the picture-dictation task. The frequencies of these MCOs support the importance of modification toward comprehensible output as a process of second language acquisition.

After over a decade of research into Swain's (1985) comprehensible output (CO) hypothesis, there is still a severe lack of data showing that learner output or output modifications have any effect on second-language (L2) learning. Izumi and Bigelow (2000, p. 245) argued that this is because, in most cases, researchers assumed rather than showed whether and how output helps with language learning. In this article, I will argue that this, in turn, is because existing research on CO was mostly descriptive in nature, focusing primarily on occurrence per se rather than acquisition or whether and how output can be a source of competence in the L2. I will outline a research agenda that makes acquisitional research central to the study of CO.The goal of this article is to propose a research agenda that makes acquisitional research central to the study of comprehensible output. It begins by looking at the context in which the comprehensible output (CO) hypothesis was proposed, namely, the need to look beyond comprehensible input as a condition for second language acquisition (SLA), which surfaced in the need to explain Language Learning 52:3, September 2002, pp. 597-647 597 I acknowledge the help I received from Nick Ellis and a number of anonymous reviewers, and I would like to thank them all for their advice and many insightful suggestions and comments.