Brooks, Donato & McGlone: "When are they going to say it right?"

This journal article discussed a study that was done to look at the types of discourse that take place during collaborative tasks. The four features that were studied were: metatalk, metacognition, use of english, and wispering to oneself. They found that by the fifth time around students' use of english and other talk had decreased. This is significant because most teachers would argue that any use of the native language in a foreign language classroom would be detrimental, but this study shows that it was only used when neccesary to figure out the task, and once students were familiar with what they needed to do, it's use declined. The authors also believe in a sociocultural perspective on language theory and conclude that classrooms rich in interaction are vital to second language acquisistion. In regards to the actual experiement conducted, I felt that the authors made it sound like a large number of students participated in their introduction, when in fact it was only 6 students I believe.