Exploring Foreign Language Learners Perceptions During the Negotiation of Meaning: Unfocused Task and Focused Task

The main objective of this study is to explore how students of the English Education Study Program at the Faculty of Education of the University of Lampung, Indonesia perceive learning, involving an unfocused task and focused task. The participants of this study were grouped in 3 pairs; high-high (H-H), high-low(H-L) and low-low(L-L) pairs. In the unfocused task, each pair was given a topic. They selected 5 from 24 available personality traits with a reason for each. While in the focused task, the discussed topics were the linguistic problems (grammar and vocabulary) coming up during the unfocused task. An adapted open-ended interview method aimed at measuring perceptions of unfocused and focused tasks served as the research instrument. The results revealed several facts about the two tasks including that the unfocused task was enjoyable to all the three types of pairs, but they failed to get input for the good of the development of their language quality because during the negotiation of meaning they focused more on meaning. Secondly, the focused task was enjoyable to H-H and H-L pairs for different reasons, and too difficult and stressful for the L-L pair. In other words, focused task was not appropriate for L-L pair. It is recommended that further studies involving more categories should investigate this field further.