The interplay between metalanguage, feedback, and meaning negotiation in oral interaction

The present article explores the affordances virtual exchanges provide to foster a focus on form, interactional feedback, and meaning negotiation in language related episodes (LREs) occurring in interaction between learners of English and learners of Spanish as a foreign language. The participants, 36 students enrolled in language courses at two universities in two different countries, took part in a virtual exchange which involved carrying out three 40-minute video calls in pairs. These calls were video recorded and constituted the data from which different types of LREs were extracted. The recordings from the first and the last video calls, which took place two and a half months apart, were transcribed and analyzed. Data analyses revealed that learners gave significantly more feedback during the last interactive task, and that only in the case of LREs initiated by L2 speakers did this lead to more repairs and a higher resolution rate of the episodes. The data also showed that the presence of metalinguistic information led to an increased number of repairs, and that reactive LREs initiated by L1 speakers and preemptive LREs initiated by L2 speakers displayed different rates of interactional feedback, meaning negotiation, modified output, and repairs.