An analysis on native speakers and non-native speakers' interaction: Negotiation of meaning

Abstract

The objective of this research is to find out what the negotiation of meaning between native speakers and non-native speakers’ interaction is like. This research is descriptive quantitative. The subjects of the research were ten students of the second grade of junior high school in ACCESS class aged around 13-14 years old, and they can also be categorized as beginner level students in studying English. The data were elicited through the conversational interaction between the students as the non-native speakers and the native speakers of English in the form of video recording. The negotiation of meaning was analyzed by categorizing the speakers’ utterances into four categories to see the frequency and the factors affecting the negotiation of meaning. The result of this research showed that clarification requests as the subcategory of the signal were the most used category by the t speakers in the interaction (30.54%). On the other hand, the least used categories were the trigger, other-modification, and follow-up (2.1%). Furthermore, the factors affecting the negotiation of meaning were pronunciation, self-confidence, and culture based on the researcher’s assumptions from observing the video recordings of the interaction. This suggests that the negotiation of meaning can happen in conversation interaction between native speakers and non-native speakers, and some factors seem to be affecting the process that can cause misunderstandings and communication breakdowns.