Teaching Listener Responses to KFL Students

Abstract

Although virtually all foreign language teaching practices advocate a communicative approach, learners' conversations lack interactional features that are essential for proper communication, and are commonly found in those of native speakers. Critically missing are listener responses (LRs) that facilitate negotiating meanings communicated among interlocutors by indicating the listener's conversational engagement, signaling the listener's stance of agreement/disagreement, alignment/disalignment, approval/disapproval, requesting clarification and confirmation, and so on. It is essential to be able to use LRs for the learners' conversation to be as natural and interactionally appropriate as those of native speakers. Therefore, it is necessary to teach how to use them implicitly or explicitly. We propose a number of procedures and activities with which learners learn how to use LRs so as to enhance their interactional competence.