This research aims to find out whether interactions help develop students’ language abilities and critical thinking skills. The results show that interactions significantly influence more complex tasks. Interactions help produce negotiations of meaning and form, make students pay more attention to the listening process, and practice more in critical thinking.
Critical listening is one of the four types of listening that are often distinguished according to the purpose. It is to assess the value of a message or its validity (Rost, 2002). Traditionally, second language teaching in listening focuses more on teaching skills and strategies of comprehension, i.e., to understand the information. We seldom ask students to judge or evaluate what is heard, which is often more challenging. Interaction is widely believed to be beneficial for L2 acquisition. However, could it also be helpful in facilitating critical thinking in listening? This research reports a study of functions of peer interactions in a listening class, aiming to find out whether peer interactions have any influences on informational listening and critical listening tasks, and whether interactions can help develop students’ abilities in language and critical thinking skills. Students were randomly assigned to two groups, one with interaction, the other with no interaction. After listening, students in the interaction group completed tasks after discussing in small groups or pairs, while students in the non-interaction group finished the tasks individually. The tasks of both groups were scored, and the conversations in interaction groups were recorded, decoded and analyzed. The results show that interactions have a significant influence on tasks which are more complex. Evidence indicates that the interactions between students can produce negotiations for meaning and negotiations of form, while making them pay more attention to their own listening processes and find the problems which may cause their comprehension breakdowns. Interactions can also provide chances for learners to practice critical thinking skills, such finding facts, giving comments, justifying with evidence, checking, and weighing them. Therefore, it is beneficial to design suitable interaction tasks in L2 listening classes so as to give learners a chance to enhance both listening and critical thinking skills.
