Worldwide experience in teaching foreign languages. Key words

1.2 The learning takes place via the interaction

At the same time, interest in ELT has shifted away from the consideration of teaching methods in isolation towards a focus on classroom interaction as the most vital element in the instructed second language learning process:

Bluntly, classroom interaction is important because interaction is the sine qua non of classroom pedagogy. Interaction is the process whereby lessons are `accomplished', to use Mehan's very apt term. (Allwright, 1984, p. 159)

Because we do not have an adequate conceptual or practical framework or methodology for describing, analysing, or evaluating the interaction which takes place in the L2 classroom, we are not able to make the L2 learning and teaching processes transparent or demonstrate how L2 learning takes place through the interaction. If and when we are able to describe, analyse and evaluate the different kinds of interaction which occur in the L2 classroom, it may then be possible to relate these to second language acquisition processes: "One of the key questions has become `What kinds of interaction promote L2 learning?'" (Ellis, 1992, p. 37).