The Notion Negotiation of Meaning Revisited

Negotiation of meaning has been shown to play a prominent role in describing learner interaction and leading toward comprehensible output. The strong claim, that negotiation of meaning is a necessary step to second language acquisition, is disputed, however. The author examines the studies of Gass and Varonis on paired learner interaction who support this strong claim and finds some problems with their findings. The author believes negotiation of meaning is better served by the weaker claim, as a possible but not essential step in second language acquisition.