“In one of the early descriptive studies on learner interaction, Michael Long and Patricia Porter (1985) examined the language produced by adult learners performing a task in pairs. There were 18 participants: 12 non-native speakers of English whose first language was Spanish, and six native English speakers. The non-native speakers were intermediate or advanced learners of English. Each individual learner participated in separate discussions with a speaker from each of the three levels. For example, an intermediate-level speaker had a conversation with another intermediate-level speaker, another with an advanced-level speaker, and another with a native speaker of English. Long and Porter compared the speech of native and non-native speakers in conversations, analysing the differences across proficiency levels in conversation pairs. They found that learners talked more with other learners than they did with native speakers. Also, learners produced more talk with advanced-level learners than with intermediate-level partners, partly because the conversations with advanced learners lasted longer.”