Interacting inside and outside of the language classroom

To extend the reach of the second language (L2) classroom, learners may be given opportunities to interact with native speakers through contact assignments or volunteer work organized through their L2 program. An underlying assumption of these practices is that `real-world' and classroom experience offer different but complementary opportunities for oral interaction. The nature of the difference is not well documented, however, which makes it difficult to assess the relative contributions that interaction in the two environments may make to the language learning process. In this study, we compared selected aspects of oral interaction experienced by two advanced adult L2 speakers of English in two contexts: one where they were students in a nine-week communicative ESL class and another where they were volunteer tutors in a three-week summer program for academically at-risk English-speaking children. The findings revealed differences in the types and quantities of activities during which oral interaction occurred, the frequency with which they were completed, and the degree of attention that the participants paid to language during communication. Overall, these differences reflected the different roles the L2 speakers assumed in the two contexts: that of language `learner' in the classroom and of language `user' outside the classroom.