Interaction research has come a long way since its beginnings nearly 25 years ago. The aim of this special issue is to demonstrate how the methodological boundaries of interaction research continue to be expanded with the use of new and interesting methodological angles and techniques. Our goal is to further our insights into the question that seems to be paramount in the interaction field at the moment—namely, how does interaction work to bring about positive effects on second language (L2) learning? The articles collected here suggest that new methodologies promise to open up avenues of research that will allow us to gain insights into the interaction-learning relationship.Our intent in this special issue is to show some of the current methodological techniques being used to provide insights about how interaction works to promote L2 learning. We would like to thank the contributing authors who have made interesting and worthwhile contributions to help us attain this goal as well as the SSLA editorial team for all their help in bringing this issue to completion.

Interaction research about the role of language production in second language (L2) development has focused largely on modified output, specifically learners' responses to negative feedback (Iwashita, 2001; Loewen & Philp, in press; Mackey & Philp, 1998; McDonough, 2005; McDonough & Mackey, in press; Nobuyoshi & Ellis, 1993; Pica, 1988; Shehadeh, 2001). However, other processes involved in language production might help account for the beneficial relationship between interaction and L2 development. This paper reports the findings of two experiments that examined the occurrence of syntactic priming—a speaker's tendency to produce a previously spoken or heard structure—during interaction between L2 English speakers. Both studies used confederate scripting to elicit dative constructions from advanced English L2 speakers. In experiment 1, the participants (n = 50) were exposed to both prepositional and double-object dative primes. The linear mixed-model analysis indicated that syntactic priming occurred with prepositional datives only. In experiment 2, the English L2 participants (n = 54) received double-object dative primes only; results showed no evidence of syntactic priming. The implications are discussed in terms of the potential role of syntactic priming in driving L2 development in interactive contexts.This research was supported by grants (03135 and 04184) from the campus research board at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I am grateful to Nick Ellis, Susan Gass, Alison Mackey, and Pavel Trofimovich for their insightful comments on this paper and to Ron Crawford for his assistance with the coding. Any errors, of course, are my own.

A number of interaction researchers have claimed that recasts might be ambiguous to learners; that is, instead of perceiving recasts as containing corrective feedback, learners might see them simply as literal or semantic repetitions without any corrective element (Long, in press; Lyster & Ranta, 1997). This study investigates learners' interpretations of recasts in interaction. Videotapes of task-based interactions including recasts and repetitions were shown to advanced English as a second language students (N = 34). Although both groups viewed the teacher's feedback (recasts, repetitions, or other), one group saw video clips that had been edited to remove the learners' nontargetlike utterances that had triggered the feedback, and another group saw the same video clips with the initial nontargetlike utterances included. After each clip, learners in both groups were asked to indicate whether they thought they were hearing a recast, a repetition, or something else. A subset of learners (n = 14) provided verbal reports while they evaluated the clips. Results show that learners who did not overhear initial learner utterances were significantly less successful at distinguishing recasts from repetitions. The verbal protocol data suggest that learners were not looking for nonverbal cues from the speakers. A post hoc analysis suggests that morphosyntactic recasts were less accurately recognized than phonological or lexical recasts in this study. These findings suggest that the contrast between a problematic utterance and a recast contributes to learners' interpretations of recasts as corrective.We are grateful to Bo Ram Suh for her help with data collection and coding and Rebecca Sachs for her help with editing. We would also like to thank Mohammed Louguit from the Center for Applied Linguistics for statistical assistance. We are grateful for the comments made by the anonymous SSLA reviewers who helped us to improve the paper. Despite the assistance of these individuals, any errors remain our own.

Implicit negative feedback has been shown to facilitate SLA, and the extent to which such feedback is given is related to a variety of task and interlocutor variables. The background of a native speaker (NS), in terms of amount of experience in interactions with nonnative speakers (NNSs), has been shown to affect the quantity of implicit negative feedback (namely recasts) in a classroom setting. This study examines the effect of experience and uses stimulated recall to attempt to understand the interactional patterns of two groups of NSs (with greater and lesser experience) interacting with second language (L2) learners outside of the classroom context. Two groups of NSs of English each completed an information exchange task with a L2 learner: The first group consisted of 11 preservice teachers with minimal experience with NNSs, whereas the second group included 8 experienced teachers with significant teaching experience. Immediately after the task, each NS participated in a stimulated recall, viewing a videotape of the interaction and commenting on the interaction. The quantitative results did not show a strong difference in the number of recasts used by the two groups, but it did show a difference in the quantity of NNS output between the two groups. This finding was corroborated by the stimulated recalls, which showed that those with experience—who clearly saw themselves as language teachers even outside of the classroom—had strategies for and concerns about getting the learners to produce output. Additionally, the experienced teachers showed greater recognition of student comprehension, student learning, and student problems. Those with little experience were more focused on themselves, on student feelings, and on procedural and task-related issues.

This comparative analysis of teacher-student interaction in two different instructional settings at the elementary-school level (18.3 hr in French immersion and 14.8 hr Japanese immersion) investigates the immediate effects of explicit correction, recasts, and prompts on learner uptake and repair. The results clearly show a predominant provision of recasts over prompts and explicit correction, regardless of instructional setting, but distinctively varied student uptake and repair patterns in relation to feedback type, with the largest proportion of repair resulting from prompts in French immersion and from recasts in Japanese immersion. Based on these findings and supported by an analysis of each instructional setting's overall communicative orientation, we introduce the counterbalance hypothesis, which states that instructional activities and interactional feedback that act as a counterbalance to a classroom's predominant communicative orientation are likely to prove more effective than instructional activities and interactional feedback that are congruent with its predominant communicative orientation.This research was supported by Standard Research Grants (410-98-0175 and 410-2002-0988) awarded to the first author from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and by a Nihon University Individual Research Grant for 2005 awarded to the second author. A version of this study was presented at the Second Language Research Forum held at Columbia University in October 2005. We are especially grateful to the participating teachers and their students and also to Yingli Yang for her role as research assistant in aggregating the datasets. We thank Sue Gass, Alison Mackey, Iliana Panova, Leila Ranta, and two SSLA reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.

This article describes how information gap tasks can be designed as instruments for data collection and analysis and as treatments in interaction research. The development of such tasks is illustrated and data are presented on their role in drawing learners' attention to second language (L2) forms that are difficult to notice through classroom discussion alone. Because the tasks presented here are closed-ended and precision oriented and require the exchange of uniquely held information, they promote modified interaction among participants and orient their attention to form, function, and meaning. These processes can be observed by the researcher during task implementation. Thus, the tasks reduce researcher dependence on externally applied treatments and analytical instruments not integral to the interaction itself. To illustrate this methodology in use, we report on a study in which six pairs of intermediate-level English L2 learners carried out three types of information gap tasks in their classrooms. They first read passages on familiar topics, whose sentences contained L2 forms that were low in salience and difficult to master but developmentally appropriate. To complete the tasks, the learners were required to identify, recall, and compare the forms, their functions, and their meanings. Data revealed close relationships among learners' attentional processes, their recall of form, function, and meaning, and the interactional processes that supported their efforts.In carrying out the design and implementation of the tasks in this article, we have worked most closely with Kristine Billmyer and MaryAnn Julian, and also Jin Ahn, Marni Baker-Stein, Mara Blake-Ward, Lyn Buchheit, Junko Hondo, Sharon Nicolary, and Jack Sullivan. Among the many graduate students who have provided assistance are Vivian Chen, Yao Chen, Yi-Chen Chen, Cathy Fillman, Leslie Harsch, Hanae Katayana, Ji Hwan Kim, Atsuko Matsui, Lisa Mullen, Amy Nichols, Matthew Salvatore, Margaret Skaarup, Lauren Smith, Cheng-Chen Tseng, Debbie Tsui, Melissa Yi, Wei-Chieh Yu, and Mira Yun.

This article reviews previous studies of the effects of implicit and explicit corrective feedback on SLA, pointing out a number of methodological problems. It then reports on a new study of the effects of these two types of corrective feedback on the acquisition of past tense -ed. In an experimental design (two experimental groups and a control group), low-intermediate learners of second language English completed two communicative tasks during which they received either recasts (implicit feedback) or metalinguistic explanation (explicit feedback) in response to any utterance that contained an error in the target structure. Acquisition was measured by means of an oral imitation test (designed to measure implicit knowledge) and both an untimed grammaticality judgment test and a metalinguistic knowledge test (both designed to measure explicit knowledge). The tests were administered prior to the instruction, 1 day after the instruction, and again 2 weeks later. Statistical comparisons of the learners' performance on the posttests showed a clear advantage for explicit feedback over implicit feedback for both the delayed imitation and grammaticality judgment posttests. Thus, the results indicate that metalinguistic explanation benefited implicit as well as explicit knowledge and point to the importance of including measures of both types of knowledge in experimental studies.This research was funded by a Marsden Fund grant awarded by the Royal Society of Arts of New Zealand. Researchers other than the authors who contributed to the research were Jenefer Philip, Satomi Mizutami, Keiko Sakui, and Thomas Delaney. Thanks go to the editors of this special issue and to two anonymous SSLA reviewers of a draft of the article for their constructive comments.

The goal of this epilogue is to use the methodological contributions of the studies presented in this special issue as a starting point for suggestions about methodology in conducting future interaction research. As is the case in most developing fields, interaction research develops methods internally as it continually borrows and extends techniques used in other disciplines and revitalizes older techniques by adding new or different angles unique to interaction. Interaction researchers have also begun to forge relationships in new areas (e.g., by working with psychologists and developing working memory [WM] tests). This sort of cooperation is an important step in the drive to uncover more information about the relationship between interaction and learning. As several contributors to this special issue have noted, the most recent advances in methodology have been driven by questions about how interaction works (as opposed to whether it works). In turn, some of the methodological innovations discussed here will also ultimately allow new questions to be asked. Indeed, the relationship between questions (i.e., suggestions about what needs to be investigated next) and methods (i.e., plans for how to carry out such investigations) is particularly close in interaction research, which is a relatively new but vibrant and quickly developing area. Consequently, this epilogue considers both methods and questions conjointly, beginning with a discussion of methodological issues in the most recent theorizing about the interaction hypothesis.I am grateful to Helen Carpenter, Akiko Fujii, Susan M. Gass, Mika Hama, Jennifer Leeman, Kim McDonough, and Jenefer Philp for various kinds of help, including discussions of ideas and feedback, in relation to an earlier version of this paper, and to Amanda Edmonds and the other SSLA editorial staff members for their outstanding work and assistance with this Epilogue and the entire special issue. Any errors are, of course, my own.

Publications received.