Young learners’ attitudes towards oral peer interaction and interactional feedback: insights from a pedagogical intervention in the EFL classroom

The present study aimed at exploring the effect of a task-supported peer interaction teaching intervention on the young EFL learners' attitudes towards peer interaction and interactional feedback. More specifically, we explored the learners' perceptions of an 8-week-long pedagogical intervention involving different types of pre-task instruction and oral peer-interaction tasks. A questionnaire with Likert-scale statements and closed and open questions was administered to ninety 9-10-year-old Catalan/Spanish bilingual EFL learners, who were divided into four intervention groups. Each group received either interactional strategy instruction, grammar instruction, both interactional strategy and grammar instruction or no instruction during the first part of a weekly intervention session and all groups participated in procedural repetition of peer interaction tasks during the second part of the same sessions. Findings show that children already had positive attitudes towards peer interaction and the provision of interactional feedback at the onset of the study. The different types of intervention favoured the children's awareness of the potential language learning benefits of peer interaction to different extents and made them reflect on their weak communicative abilities in the FL.