Abstract Belonging to the interactionist perspective, the collaborative dialogue is a technique which engages learners in joint problem-solving and knowledge building. With the aim of investigating the link between this technique and vocabulary acquisition and retention, this study was conducted with 18 threshold English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners who were randomly chosen and put in 6 groups. They were given 6 lexical-focused tasks to be completed collaboratively and their interaction was audio-recorded. The instances of lexical-based language-related episodes (LREs) were identified in the transcribed dialogues and their outcomes were coded as “correctly resolved”, “incorrectly resolved”, and “unresolved”. The frequency of the LREs was computed; it was found that the learners were able to solve the lexical problems they encountered to a very large extent. Furthermore, the analysis of LREs and the comparison of posttest and delayed posttest scores provided convincing evidence of a link between the outcomes of LREs and the learners’ vocabulary acquisition and retention, suggesting that “correctly resolved” LREs resulted in learning and retaining the target words, while “unresolved” LREs led to non-significant learning and “incorrectly resolved” LREs led to learning the wrong meaning of the vocabulary items. The findings along with the opportunities and challenges of collaborative dialogue are discussed and possible implications for language teaching are explained.

中文翻译：

---

协作对话：门槛EFL学习者词汇习得和保留的机遇和挑战

摘要 协作对话属于交互论视角，是一种让学习者共同解决问题和构建知识的技术。为了调查这种技术与词汇习得和保留之间的联系，本研究对随机选择并分成 6 组的 18 名门槛英语作为外语 (EFL) 学习者进行。他们被赋予了 6 项以词汇为重点的任务以协作完成，并且他们的互动被录音。在转录的对话中识别出基于词汇的语言相关事件 (LRE) 的实例，其结果被编码为“正确解决”、“错误解决”和“未解决”。计算了 LRE 的频率；结果发现，学习者能够在很大程度上解决他们遇到的词汇问题。此外，LRE 的分析以及后测和延迟后测分数的比较提供了令人信服的证据，证明 LRE 的结果与学习者的词汇习得和保留之间存在联系，表明“正确解决”的 LRE 导致学习和保留目标单词，而“未解析”的 LRE 导致学习不重要，而“错误解析”的 LRE 导致学习词汇项的错误含义。讨论了调查结果以及协作对话的机遇和挑战，并解释了对语言教学的可能影响。LRE 的分析以及后测和延迟后测分数的比较提供了令人信服的证据，证明 LRE 的结果与学习者的词汇习得和保留之间存在联系，表明“正确解决”的 LRE 导致学习和保留目标单词，而“未解析”的 LRE 导致学习不重要，“错误解析”的 LRE 导致学习词汇项的错误含义。讨论了调查结果以及协作对话的机遇和挑战，并解释了对语言教学的可能影响。LRE 的分析以及后测和延迟后测分数的比较提供了令人信服的证据，证明 LRE 的结果与学习者的词汇习得和保留之间存在联系，表明“正确解决”的 LRE 导致学习和保留目标单词，而“未解析”的 LRE 导致学习不重要，“错误解析”的 LRE 导致学习词汇项的错误含义。讨论了调查结果以及协作对话的机遇和挑战，并解释了对语言教学的可能影响。而“未解析”的 LRE 导致学习不重要，“错误解析”的 LRE 导致学习词汇项的错误含义。讨论了调查结果以及协作对话的机遇和挑战，并解释了对语言教学的可能影响。而“未解析”的 LRE 导致学习不重要，“错误解析”的 LRE 导致学习词汇项的错误含义。讨论了调查结果以及协作对话的机遇和挑战，并解释了对语言教学的可能影响。