Conversation analysis

Teacher questions are claimed to be constitutive of classroom interaction because of their crucial role both in the construction of knowledge and the organization of classroom proceedings (Dalton Puffer, 2007). Most of previous research on teachers’ questions mainly focused on identifying and discovering different question types believed to be helpful in creating the opportunities for learners’ interactions. Drawing on conversation analysis through adopting socio-cultural perspective, this study, however, aims to examine how EFL teachers manage understanding-check questions in their talk-in-interaction. For this purpose, six EFL teachers’ discursive classroom practices were observed, video-recorded, and transcribed line-by-line in its entirety. Through the microanalysis of the transcribed data, our findings suggest that EFL teachers vary in their management of understanding-check questions and the teachers’ understanding-check questions tend to serve different functions in the different micro-contexts identified. Three major sequential environments emerged to feature understanding-check questions in this study: Activity-boundary environment, post-instruction environment and within-activity environment. The findings of the study indicate that understanding-check questions at activity boundary environment are designed to accomplish dual functions, however those launched in post-instruction and within-activity environments maintain a singular focus on ensuring absolute understanding of the just-given explanation or instruction.

Concerns over the phony nature of textbooks and artificiality of their contents in reflecting authentic language have been raised by a number of researchers. It has been argued that many language teaching programs result in the failure of learners of English to successfully communicate in the target language. The problem with these programs is that there is no general agreement about the success of these materials in developing the pragmatic competence necessary for interlocutors’ mutually intelligible communication[D1] . Hence, this study explored communicated requests for nonverbal/verbal goods and services (RNGS/RVGS) in the dialogues of 5 textbooks and 8 English movies. The utterances of the textbooks and movies were evaluated on six criteria deriving from research on speech act theory, politeness, and conversation analysis. These included whether the textbooks discussed second pair parts, the forms of requests, the context of request occurrence, the nature of the devices through which the requests are mitigated, and multi-turn request forms. The results of the analysis revealed that, except for re-requests and dispreferred responses of RNGS,textbooks’ strategies including forms, face, contexts of RVGS, and strategies of RNGSwere not realized through adequate examples compared to their variants in movies.Most importantly,except for bald on record, internal mitigators of RVGS, external mitigators, and direct and indirect forms of RNGS, the other request strategies in the textbooks showed less variety than those of their counterparts in the movies. Internally mitigated RVGS were the onlystrategies variouslyexploited in the textbooks.The findings revealed that textbook designers should improve their instructional materials by incorporatingmore accurate samples of communicated requests in their future textbooks.

Despite the abundance of research on teachers’ repair practices in language classroom interaction, there are not enough conversation analytic studies on repair organization with the focus on the details of interaction in the context of EFL. Drawing on sociocultural and situated learning theories, this study explores the contingent nature of English language teachers’ organizational patterns of repair practices (repair focus, repair completion, repair trajectory and convergence) by adopting the context-dependency of repair as a point of departure. More specifically, we analyzed two classroom interactional contexts: form-oriented and meaning-oriented contexts as well as their realization in student participation. Data were collected through video- and audio-tape recordings of 14 lessons from eight EFL teachers at four private language institutes in Iran and they were analyzed based on the framework of conversation analysis methodology. The analysis of lesson transcripts indicated that the teachers varied in their repair practices; however, an organizational repair pattern emerged from the data. The analysis of qualitative data revealed that the teachers largely repaired divergently in form-oriented contexts but convergently in meaning-oriented contexts, and deployed other-repair more than self-repair. The pedagogical implications of the study are for language teachers’ awareness of the role of repair organization in facilitating learning opportunities and for teachers’ professional development.

For many English as a Foreign Language (EFL) teachers, working contingently with language learners' problematic learner contributions in classroom interaction remains a challenge. Drawing on conversation analysis methodology and using sociocultural and situated learning theories, this longitudinal case study traces the progressional changes in one Iranian English language teacher's repairing practices (his orientation to repairable, repair completion type and trajectory) along with the changing impacts of different organizational patterns of repair and interactional awareness on learning opportunities. The data material consists of video recordings of EFL oral classroom interactions (11 lessons) and reflective conversations (seven sessions) between the researcher and the participant teacher at one private language institute in Iran over a period of six months, in two phases. Qualitative results from the first (descriptive) phase indicated that the teacher's provision of repair in meaning-oriented contexts was generally convergent while in form-oriented ones divergent. The qualitative changes revealed the teacher's increasing attention to lexical errors and use of self-repair types, particularly in form-oriented contexts and the teacher's progress in interactional awareness including identification of contexts and repair organization, use of metalanguage and critical self-evaluation This study makes a contribution to conversation analytic research and our understanding of English teacher professional development.

Despite the fact that classroom interaction is an indispensable aspect of language learning, many EFL students do not show any willingness to participate (WTP) in classroom activities. In view of this problem, the current study aimed to describe how Iranian EFL learners’ participation in collaborative tasks can lead to WTP. Therefore, primarily discoursal features of collaborative tasks and then behavioral representations of WTP were identified. To this end, nine EFL intermediate learners (five males and four females) participated in the study and were assigned to two groups. First two collaborative tasks were designed: The first group were asked to make a digital story collaboratively and the second group were asked to make an advertisement for selling a house. The classroom interactions among students in different classrooms were video-recorded and transcribed based on conversation analysis principles. Then the frequency of the turns taken by each student was counted as indicator of WTP in the assigned task. Multimodal analysis (gaze, facial expressions, head movement, body posture and gesture) was also used to analyze behavioral representations of EFL learners’ WTP. The findings revealed that discoursal features of WTP include negotiation, elaboration, conflict, sharing expertise, humor, asking for elaboration, conflict.,and behavioral representations include eye contact, body language, and the sitting position of students which can indicate that students’ engagement in collaborative tasks can have impact on their WTP. The findings can have implications for EFL teachers, material developers, and teacher education programs.

Learning-oriented assessment (LOA) has recently gained increasing attention among language researchers. It has been found momentous for both teaching and learning. However, its practical domain has remained under-researched and the current literature has mostly focused on its practicality. Nevertheless, the role of teachers’ assessment strategies in the implementation and success of LOA has been overlooked, to date. Moreover, there is a dearth of research on how English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers capture moments of spontaneous LOA. To fill these gaps, the present case study explored an Iranian EFL teacher’s questioning strategies as an aspect of spontaneous LOA. Utilizing Conversation Analysis (CA) and Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), this study attempted to uncover the instances of LOA practice represented through questioning strategies during classroom interactions at a basic level. The findings revealed that two types of questioning strategies, namely metacognitive questions and designedly incomplete utterances (DIU), occurred when the teacher extended the main assessment task to focus on the earlier learning goals. In so doing, the teacher sought evidence of student learning status already elicited to take the next step. The study has insightful implications for EFL teachers and trainers concerning metacognitive questions and DIU as useful tools to practice LOA in L2 education.

This study examines the occurrence of increments in three languages (Nigerian English, Yoruba, and Pidgin) in the medical context in Nigeria with the aim to give a functional classification to increments built upon the conceptual and structural description in the literature. This is a step further from reflecting the manifestation of increments in the monotypic context of mundane interactions to an investigation of the phenomenon in an institutional context. Fifty audio-taped recordings of naturally occurring conversations in selected hospitals in three states in southwest Nigeria were transcribed and analysed using Conversation Analysis. Functional classification of increments in the data revealed six types of increments namely, symptom-motivated, information-motivated, history-related, face-saving, emphatic, and mundane. The increments were mainly glue-ons and very few instances of non-add-ons in the context of history-related increments. Patients were more frequently disposed to designing increments than doctors in STI and HIV consultations in Nigeria. The patients utilized the symptom-motivated increments for the purpose of elaborating on their health concerns and for clarifying the most pressing symptoms. This afforded them the opportunity of unburdening their health concerns and focalising more pressing symptoms. In addition, the sensitive nature of their condition also spurred the deployment of face-saving and history-related increments to handle embarrassing and face-sensitive questions about their condition and lifestyle.