Developing interactional competence during study abroad: Listener responses in L2 Spanish

Although many listener responses are minimal (e.g., yeah, mhm), the listener plays an important role in shaping discourse and creating intersubjectivity in everyday conversation. Listener responses are considered to be universal (e.g., Heinz, 2003), but their form, frequency, and placement vary cross-culturally. How L2 learners use and acquire listener response behavior in the L2 is an understudied area of L2 pragmatic development. This issue is taken up by the present study, which examines the L2 development of listener responses in Spanish by six study abroad students who spent one semester in Spain. Over the course of the semester abroad, participants made naturalistic audio-recordings of everyday conversations between themselves and native Spanish-speaking host families and age peers, in addition to completing journals and interviews. The results suggest that through participation and observation in everyday L2 conversation during study abroad learners were able to develop their interactional competence by shifting their listener behavior towards less frequent use of the minimal token sí (‘yeah’) and increased use of other acknowledgment and agreement expressions, assessments (e.g., ‘that's great’), and repetition.