Conversation Analysis and Language Classroom Discourse

Conversation Analysis and Language ClassroomDiscourse

Thorsten Huth*Southern Illinois University

Abstract

Language classrooms are educational settings in which face-to-face talk is viewed as the pivotalfactor driving its major functions and goals. Conversation analysis (CA) has increasingly beenapplied to the analysis of language classroom discourse in pursuit of studies that may further ourunderstanding of what language teachers and learners actually ‘do’ interactionally. This article pro-vides an introduction to the larger strands of CA research in this vein, focusing on language class-room discourse in the context of and beyond tasks, repair and feedback, identity and codeswitching, and language development.

Introduction

Not unlike physical classroom space (complete with walls, chairs, lecterns, desks and blackboards), classroom discourse is built on a particular architecture of its own – one, as itwere, of interaction (Seedhouse 2004). Teachers and students advance the educationalagenda primarily through face-to-face interaction, and it is this interaction itself that putsteaching and learning into action. Therefore, it is relevant to investigate how teachersand students organize their talk while talking and how that organization figures vis-a-visthe specific goals of the occasion that brings the interactants together in a classroom inthe first place: teaching and learning. This applies particularly to foreign and second lan-guage classrooms in which language is both the means of teaching and learning as well asthe object. In the presence of various conceptions of language learning on the one hand,and various methodological approaches to the teaching of foreign languages on the other,the investigation of classroom talk appears all the more significant. How does teacher talkreflect the act of teaching? What kind of interaction may bring about what kind of affor-dances for language learning? How do teachers and students interact, in the context ofwhat kind of verbal activities, and to what effect? As Hall and Walsh (2002) notecorrectly, these questions are central to the language teaching profession and those whoinform and shape it:

Because schools are important sociocultural contexts, their classrooms, and more specifically,their discoursively formed instructional environments created through teacher-student interac-tion, are consequential in the creation of effectual learning environments and ultimately in theshaping of individual learners’ language development. Because most learning opportunities areaccomplished through face-to-face interaction, its role is considered especially consequential inthe creation of effectual learning environments and ultimately in the shaping of learners’ devel-opment. (Hall and Walsh 2002:186)

The analysis of classroom discourse spans a considerable variety of educational contexts,countries, and languages. Given the scope of the subject matter, this article strives to

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provide a survey of research on classroom interaction with two specific conceptual limita-tions. For one, this review focuses on talk occurring in foreign or second language class-rooms. Second, the discussion restricts itself to studies in a particular methodologicaltradition: conversation analysis (henceforth CA). Having spurred notable interest duringthe past decade, CA-informed studies on classroom talk continue to contribute to ourunderstanding of the language classroom. As we will see, from this micro-analytic per-spective, instructed language learning settings emerge as an interactional space in whichnot only language teaching or learning take place, but also as an arena in which teachersand students collaboratively construct a variety of social worlds, negotiate their identities,all while shaping the process of teaching and learning.

Analyzing Language Classroom Discourse

Not quite a decade ago, Hall and Walsh (2002) reviewed research on classroom interac-tion from a sociocultural perspective, a strand of research that views the creation andsharing of knowledge and skills in classrooms as an inherently social activity which isnegotiated by talk. Learning, including language learning, is seen as a matter of students’and teachers’ gradual socialization into particular interactional practices over time. Thesepractices form the interactional environment in which language classroom talk occurs andthrough which teaching and learning are negotiated.

The basic goal had thus far been to establish particular patterns in teacher–studentinteraction as they may be related to particular activities and interaction formats germaneto the classroom environment (such as the well-known ‘IRF-sequence’). Such research isparticularly warranted given that the epistemologies of language teaching have developedinto specific notions such as contextualized instruction (Omaggio-Hadley 2000; Shrumand Glisan 2004), task-based instruction (Ellis 2003; Lee 2000; Nunan 2004),or approaches based on various disciplines that investigate language learning (Lee andVanPatten 2003; VanPatten 2002). These formalized approaches, often striving to connectrelated theories of mind, language, learning, and cognition, vary in their programmaticclaims as well as in their reliance on empirical validation. Ultimately, they suggest partic-ular teaching practices that, if implemented in the classroom, may result in particularlyorganized discursive environments. In other words, different teaching methods may bringabout different kinds of talk between teacher and students (or between students and stu-dents) which may turn out to have rather different characteristics and effects. It is anongoing endeavor to ascertain what kind of interactional structures may exists in class-room settings and whether such patterns in fact do what they are meant to do in light ofour general ideas about how language teaching and learning works. Hall and Walsh(2002:197) conclude that ‘…while many studies have asserted links between [interactionand language learning], only recently have researchers begun gathering empirical evidencefor these assertions’. It remained to be seen within what kind of theoretical frameworkssuch studies would proceed, with what kind of questions at their core, and with whatkind of scope and limitations such research would have to come to terms. CA-informedclassroom studies have emerged as one such approach.

The adoption of CA as a research methodology for topics concerned with languagelearning has flourished particularly since Firth and Wagner’s (1997) widely acknowledgedposition paper. Irrespective of some of the conceptual difficulties in this endeavor (seeGass 2004; Gass et al. 2007; Firth and Wagner 1998, 2007; Kasper 1997, 2006; Wagner1996, 1998, 2004), the central analytic concepts of CA are finding their way into the lan-guage teaching and learning literature as we discuss, for instance, turn-taking, adjacency

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pairs, preference structure, or repair. This is in part thanks to repeated efforts to makeCA’s analytic ‘toolbox’ accessible to the relevant audiences concerned with languagelearning in classrooms and beyond (Gardner and Wagner 2004; Liddicoat 2007; Markee2000; Richards and Seedhouse 2005; Schegloff et al. 2002; Seedhouse 2004; ten Have2007; Wong and Olsher 2000).

While an in-depth introduction to CA’s epistemological and methodological apparatusgoes beyond the scope of this review, it is relevant to consider some basics of what CAas an analytic lens brings to the analysis of interaction in general, and how that applies tothe foreign or second language classroom. As a research methodology, CA emerged fromsociological inquiry in the late 1960s, most prominently as it was advanced by the workof Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson (Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff2007). CA is basically concerned with explicating the systematic properties that organizethe back and forth of naturally occurring talk. CA seeks to describe how speakers andhearers make sense of each other’s conduct as talk unfolds from turn to turn, and howspeakers display their understanding of each other’s talk in their talk. How speakers antic-ipate, interpret, and produce their own verbal and non-verbal conduct in light of theircoparticipants’ conduct is taken as inherently systematic, inherently social in nature, andcontingent on the use of the full array of linguistic and extra-linguistic resources availableto interactants as they fulfill their social and interactional needs (Atkinson and Heritage1986).

Central to CA research is its emic orientation, meaning its insistence on deriving rele-vant analytic categories about talk from observing the talk and the orientation of partici-pants as it is displayed therein, rather than relying on a priori conceptions about what mayor may not be relevant for the analysis of talk from the outset. As language professionalsseek to understand the nature and the effects of interaction in the classroom, it is under-standable that their professional beliefs and conceptions of what may happen in aclassroom (and why) would affect the analysis of classroom talk. Schegloff clarifies thatCA is, however, primarily working the other way around:

How can we show that what is so loomingly relevant for us (as competent members of societyor as professional scientists) was relevant for the parties to the interaction we are examining, andthereby arguably implicated in their production of the details of that interaction? How can weshow that what seems inescapably relevant, both to us and to the participant, about the‘context’ of the interaction, is demonstrably consequential for some specifiable aspect of thatinteraction? (Schegloff 1992:128)

Hence, Schegloff cautions us not to attempt to work with interactional data, includingdata featuring classroom discourse, in such a way as to understand it primarily from what-ever theorized perspective we consider to be relevant for educational research in languageclassrooms. Rather, he advocates the central CA dictum that, first and foremost, talk mustbe understood from within its inner workings. In other words, we can only understandwhat concepts are relevant for the analysis of talk by looking in the talk itself for demon-strable signs that the participants themselves are making relevant particular categoriesthrough their talk. We can only connect observable interactional behavior to the ques-tions that may have motivated our examination of it in the first place once such relevancehas been established from the ‘bottom’ of the data ‘up’. Connecting interactional datagenerated in a particular institutional environment to the institutional goals of that envi-ronment is thus seen as a second step.

This analytic principle has been successfully applied to the analysis of talk in variousinstitutional contexts (Bowles and Seedhouse 2009; Drew and Heritage 1992). In our

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case, the connection of observable interactional behaviors in a specific institutional settingfocus on the interactional processes of language teaching and learning to the extent theyare observable in classroom discourse. Therefore, we may rephrase Schegloff’s pointabove specifically for the language classroom: How can we show that the teacher is‘doing’ teaching through talk and how; how can we show that learners are actually ‘doing’learning through talk and how; how can we show that particular interaction formats inwhole class discussion, partner activities, or group work, are actually ‘doing’ what wemay expect them to, and how? In language classrooms, participants’ display of and orien-tation towards understanding is critical to the overall purpose and outcome of the talkitself. This is particularly the case since students and teachers are engaged in the processof communicating in and about a language which the majority of the participants is stilllearning. And since one of the explicit goals of conversation analytic work is isolating anddescribing the display and orientation towards mutual understanding, its appeal as aresearch methodology in instructed language learning settings is evident.

Since the first applications of CA principles to classroom interaction (e.g. McHoul1978), more specific arguments have been advanced by a variety of scholars (Lantolf andJohnson 2007; Markee and Kasper 2004; Mondada 1995; Mori 2007; Schegloff et al.2002; Seedhouse 1994, 1998; Wong and Olsher 2000). Seedhouse (1994) points out earlyon the basic point of departure for any CA-informed inquiry and its use for classroombased research, namely CA’s transcription practices which document talk to a degree ofdetail which was previously not attained. To the extent it is possible through a print med-ium, CA transcripts attempt to replicate the moment-by-moment succession of discernableactions in its coding, including features such as prosody, overlap of talk, starts and restarts,hesitations, cut-offs, etc. (however, see Markee and Stansell (2007) for a discussion ofrecent technological advances in electronic publishing which allows the dissemination ofactual audio and video data, and Hellermann (2006, 2007, 2008) who is providing links tovideo recordings). This attention to the temporal unfolding of talk in the analysis of tran-scripts is highly consequential to the analysis if we consider that, in previous classroomresearch involving transcripts, much of what actually happens in natural language produc-tion had largely been ignored or, at the very least, greatly simplified by focusing on thelexical level. Writing down ‘what was said’ without attention to how multi-party talk mayoverlap, without consideration for whether and how long a speaker may hesitate betweenturns, without paying attention to how long a particular vowel may be drawn out andwith what kind of intonation pattern – such transcription practices ultimately force variousaspects accompanying natural language production and comprehension into a lexicalizedstraightjacket, potentially to the detriment of the overall analysis.

The following review introduces CA research on interaction in instructed languagelearning settings, highlighting four general research areas that have emerged thus far.Namely, these areas comprise studying talk-in-interaction in language classrooms withinand beyond pedagogically assigned tasks, examining the notion of repair, investigating therole of code switching and identity, and the pursuit of various topics in language devel-opment over time as they are relevant to talk-in-interaction in the language classroom.

Interaction Within and Beyond Tasks

Language teaching methodology has increasingly advocated the departure from a concep-tion of language classroom discourse solely based on asking questions and answering themas the dominant interactive paradigm (i.e. question-answer). Rather, it is seen as advanta-geous that language learners are put in a position in the classroom that affords the use of

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the language they are learning for particular communicative purposes (Long 1983; Swain1985). To this end, language learners engage in particular ‘tasks’ with each other whichare structured in such a way as to allow learners to engage in the ‘expression, interpreta-tion, and negotiation of meaning’ (Lee 2000:1). Such language classroom tasks aredesigned based on two major assumptions, namely that (a) the plan for a task brings aboutparticular affordances for language learning, and (b) once a task has been assigned to part-ners or a small group of language learners, the communication prompted by the task willin fact produce talk and interaction on the part of participants that will mirror theintended task plan. Hence, classroom interaction is seen to proceed in terms of a succes-sion of assigned tasks, thusly making up in quantity and quality the entirety of talk inlanguage classrooms.

A number of CA studies have investigated whether the interaction structures thatunfold in the context of assigned language learning tasks in fact bear the characteristicsthat teachers expect them to, thusly relating instructional design of tasks and the interac-tion that ensues to one another (Brouwer 2003; Hellermann 2007; Markee 2004;Mondada and Pekarek Doehler 2004; Mori 2002; Seedhouse 2005). Mori (2002) fur-nishes a study on talk that was audio-recorded during group work in an advanced Japa-nese as a Foreign Language classroom. The pedagogical task students were to accomplishwas a ‘discussion meeting’ between class participants and invited native speakers of Japa-nese. Even though the activity was explicitly set up to foster information flow thatequally involved all speakers (i.e. class participants and native speaker informants), adetailed analysis of the transcripts reveals that class participants enacted interactional struc-tures generally known from structured interviews. By repeatedly initiating particular adja-cency pairs (question – answer), students on the one hand and native speaker informantson the other hand assumed roles (as interviewers and interviewees) we find in interviewsituations in the process of asking and answering questions. This was neither plannednor directed interactional behavior and shows how the initial task plan and the actuallyensuing interaction may differ.

To come to this conclusion, Mori follows the procedure laid out above: starting witha micro-analysis of the sequential unfolding of talk during the task itself, she isolates par-ticular structures, which she then relates to structures found in naturally occurring talkand to structures found in other institutional contexts, and finally attempts to reconcilethe structures of talk with the institutional goals of language classrooms. Students’ under-standing of the task could also be examined through an analysis of pre-planning talkamong students. This kind of interaction preceded the task and was found to be relevantfor the inner organization of the interactional structures that ensued when the task wasfinally carried out. In the same vein, Hellermann (2007) focuses specifically on task open-ings and their underlying structures, and Mondada and Pekarek Doehler (2004) showhow tasks, once underway, may become transformed and reconfigured by participants asthey engage in them.

As we can see, talk accompanying and surrounding a language learning task displays avariety of particular participation structures (Phillips 1972) as tasks are initiated by the tea-cher, and then discussed, interpreted, enacted, and brought to an end by students. Thissuggests that language professionals, as Seedhouse (1994) posits, may severely underesti-mate the overall complexity of classroom interaction. Though many studies of classroomdiscourse draw from examples sampled from participation structures manifest during a‘task-in-progress’, classroom interaction can be shown not to be exclusively organized bytasks. Rather, classroom interaction displays a much larger array of possible speaker orien-tations which await empirical description (Seedhouse 2005). Perhaps not surprisingly,



recent CA literature is describing and labeling new interactional phenomena as ourinsight into various participation structures and their exact linguistic and interactionalmanifestations grows. This includes, for instance, sharing time as a regular classroom activ-ity (Yazigi and Seedhouse 2005), or story-based lessons (Li and Seedhouse 2010).

Another strand of research focuses on what happens in classroom interaction at transi-tions from one activity to another and on how particular participation structures may beembedded in others. Markee (2004) investigates what he terms Zones of Interactional Tran-sition which characterizes moments in classroom discourse in which teachers and studentsnegotiate mutual understanding and classroom control, exemplified in his study in thecontext of counter question sequences and tactical fronting talk. As he shows, not all of thetalk in such episodes is devoted to language learning, but in part also negotiates socialissues and the management of the classroom environment. Mori (2004) similarly discussesparticipation structures occurring at particular sequential boundaries that mark speakers’shifting orientations to related but separate tasks: on the one hand, students advance aparticular language learning task, and on the other hand, they concurrently and locallysolve difficulties in understanding particular lexical items. Thusly, students regularly insert(i.e. initiate, carry through, and close) particular sequence structures into the proceedingsof another overarching activity. This local shifting of speaker orientation is also exempli-fied in summons-answer sequences as individual students summon the attention of theteacher during class (Cekaite 2008), in the playful recycling of teacher talk by learners(Cekaite and Aronsson 2004), or in spontaneous, form-focused language play (Cekaiteand Aronsson 2005).

Hence, CA’s detailed transcription practices and micro-analyses of the sequentialunfolding of language classroom interaction have revealed the partial idealization of somewidely promoted conceptions about interaction in language classrooms. Talk in class-rooms, from the ‘bottom’ of the raw data ‘up’ into analytic categories, hence from thepoint of view of those who actually do the speaking, emerges as a multilayered activity inwhich local interactional management organizes and advances the succession of activities,their transitions, and their inner workings. Ultimately, classroom interaction emerges as aresource for learners and teachers to manage different yet often concurrent social andcommunicative purposes to which participants orient as necessary, moment by moment,turn by turn.

Repair

Success in ordinary talk is often seen as contingent on the overall degree of mutualunderstanding. However, understanding is not always a given. One of the regular featuresof talk-in-interaction identified by conversation analysts is the notion of repair, a mecha-nism that allows speakers to identify problems in speaking, hearing, or understanding intalk, and potentially to resolve them (Schegloff et al. 1977). Repair can be analyzed inlight of where it occurs relative to a trouble source, who initiates and who resolves therepair effort, and the outcome, i.e. success or failure of repair efforts.

For language classrooms, the interactional organization of repair is of interest becausemutual understanding among teachers and students is contingent on more than one lan-guage, and students master one of these languages only in parts. Repair may occur in var-ious interactional contexts, such as in teacher–whole class interaction, in individualteacher–student interaction, and in student–student interaction during partner or groupwork, thus serving potentially different purposes. CA classroom studies have found arange of regular classroom phenomena to benefit from being analyzed in light of repair

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(Brouwer 1999; Hall 2007; Hellermann 2009; Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain 2003; Seed-house 2001, 2007, 2010).

Brouwer (1999) shows that instructional materials that target listening skills in the class-room can be improved if they are informed by a thorough understanding of repair in nat-urally occurring conversation. However, repair as it occurs in mundane conversation andrepair in language classroom interaction may serve different functions, prompting the ana-lyst to contextualize specific repair practices according to the pedagogical focus in which itoccurs (Seedhouse 1999). Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain (2003) demonstrate that the orga-nization of repair in language classrooms may not only reflect interactants’ specific percep-tion of their respective classroom roles (i.e. as teachers and learners), but also that theseconceptions of roles affect their access to repair as a resource. Access to repair, however, isconsequential for learners’ success since repair is also implicated in how learners modifytheir input and output, a process currently viewed as central to driving language learning(VanPatten 2002). Hellermann (2009) provides a case study on how repair as an interac-tional resource gradually develops in one language learner and shows that this developmentis not solely a matter of interactional development, but that the emergence of repairbehaviors by learners is also tied to their overall language development. Seedhouse (2001),on the other hand, focuses on teacher discourse, demonstrating how corrective feedbackby the teacher can be viewed through the CA concept of repair. The findings suggest thatthe specific use or omission of particular repair behaviors by language teachers may conveyimplicit and possibly unintended pedagogical messages to students.

Hence, applying repair to the analysis of language classroom discourse may informteachers’ understanding of the interactional contingencies of the very talk they strive tofacilitate for the purposes of language learning. The kind of repair work found in lan-guage classrooms provides insight into teachers’ and students’ perceptions and instantia-tions of their respective roles, and it is implicated in how learners modify theirorientation to each other in terms of comprehension and production. Finally, repair may,by token of its mere presence or absence in teacher talk, convey implicit messages to stu-dents. While debate on classifying repair and its functions in classroom settings continues(Hall 2007; Seedhouse 2007), we can see that an understanding of one of CA’s funda-mental analytic tools provides valuable insight into some of the most consequential aspectsof language classroom interaction.

Identity, Code Switching

The institutional nature of language classrooms pre-assigns at least two clear roles for theparticipants: there are teachers and learners, and that which teachers and learners respec-tively ‘do’ through their interaction can be (and has often been) seen predominantly inlight of these two specific roles. We noted above that the identities of teachers and learn-ers as teachers and learners may surface in classroom interaction insofar as they can betraced to the presence or absence of particular interactional strategies (e.g. repair). How-ever, these specific identities are not the only potentially relevant ones in classroom talk.As Firth and Wagner (1997:292) state, notions of teacher or student identity are onlyselected identities among other possible ones which may be relevant simultaneously in agiven situation. We note that, if we follow CA’s data-driven approach, the relevance of aspeaker identity to the conduct of teachers or students would require the analyst to showthat and how particular identities in fact are made relevant by participants in their talk,how they are collaboratively ‘talked into being’ for the interaction-in-progress (Antakiand Widdecombe 1998).



Mori and Hasegawa (2009) provide an analysis of learners’ word searches during atask-in-progress. As the analysis suggests, as students negotiate a particular task with theinstructional materials on the one hand and their talk on the other hand, their conductreflects their particular, locally relevant identity as language learners. In CA parlance,they are ‘doing being a language learner’ to the extent that their ‘being’ learners isdemonstrably reflected in their ‘doing’ learning in their stepwise advancement of thetask through the back and forth of their talk. Kasper (2004) provides an example ofhow students display their orientation to particular identities in their talk beyond theclassic ‘teacher’ and ‘student’. In an analysis of dyadic talk among language learners, shetraces how the identities of ‘target language expert, target language novice’ surface ininteraction. What is notable in both analyses is that these identities, while omnirelevantin terms of being, only become relevant in terms of ‘doing’ (i.e. in terms of beingdemonstrably foregrounded by speakers in talk) in particular situational and sequentialenvironments, and not in others. Hence, if analyzed based on actual classroom talk,identity must be seen as situated, as relevant to an interaction only if situationallyforegrounded.

Richards (2006) pursues a similar direction as he applies Zimmerman’s (1998) suggestedidentity types to the analysis of language classroom interaction, namely that of (a) dis-course identity, (b) situated identity, and (c) transportable identity (60). The first refers toidentities assumed by speakers in a particular sequential context (e.g. questioner,answerer); the second are identities surrounding speakers in particular contexts (e.g. tea-cher or learner in a classroom); the last includes all the thinkable identities residing in agiven individual and which may well surface in talk (e.g. mother, motorcyclist, ice creamenthusiast). Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain (2005) examine this process in the context ofcode switching, showing that learners do not simply use their L1 as a handy resource forcommunication when the L2 fails them. Rather, the respective use of L1 and L2 isshown to be strategically used by language learners to contextualize and frame the situatedmeaning of their utterances. Therefore, code switching constitutes a resource for learnersto negotiate their identities as participants of either the L1 or L2 community. Ustuneland Seedhouse (2005) examine the orderliness of teacher-induced code switching, itsfunctions, and its effects for the unfolding of classroom talk. We may note that here,research on language classrooms specifically and research on classroom discourse in gen-eral may benefit greatly from one another. Some work, particularly in bilingual educationsettings, has already been undertaken (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 2005) and providesa perspective on code choice and code switching which is largely commensurate with theconception of the (language) classroom as a community of (interactional) practice centralin this discussion.

In sum, examining code switching in the language classroom shows that it is notmerely a mechanical choice by speakers between available linguistic systems, nor canthe investigation of how identities are co-constructed in classroom talk be reduced tothose identities most commonly foregrounded in classroom research, namely that ofteachers and learners. Rather, speaker identity as well as code switching providessystematic resources for teachers and learners to construct and organize the social spaceof language classrooms. Accordingly, Richards (2006) argues that viewing the sum ofinteractional behaviors surfacing in language classrooms exclusively as a result of theinstitutional identities (teachers, students) misses the mark, because it may result in fail-ing to acknowledge significant pedagogical opportunities on the one hand, and possibleaffordances for language learning on the other (see also Block 2007 and Ellwood 2008on the topic).

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Language Development over Time

Another strand of research brings us back to the beginning of our discussion. If the inter-actional architecture of language classrooms is viewed as comprising a community of(interactional) practice, then the question is not only what the individual elements of thisarchitecture may be in terms of the studies reviewed above. It is furthermore relevant totrace the process of how teachers and students collaboratively establish these practices,how these practices may change over time, and how such development may be impli-cated in the temporal development of learners’ overall linguistic and interactional compe-tencies. In short, it is relevant to investigate to which extent the development of suchcompetencies can be seen as learning.

It must be noted that much of the debate surrounding CA as an analytic tool for mat-ters situated in SLA has centered on whether language learning may at all be within CA’spurview. This is a central methodological consideration given that different strands ofSLA research may delineate the notions of language, learning, and cognition quite differ-ently (Mori and Markee 2009 and Kasper 2009 provide recent accounts). To the extentthat ‘change over time’ (Brouwer and Wagner 2004) can be seen as a concept definingthe temporal development of linguistic and communicative competencies in languagelearners, and to the extent that this change may be the demonstrable result of languageclassroom interaction and the process of gradual socialization, only a few longitudinal CAstudies exist. Hellermann (2008, 2009) presents some of the first longitudinal data onhow language learners participate and organize task openings over time and how repairpractices may develop over time. In a case study, Cekaite (2007) examines the participa-tion structures of one younger learner in multiparty talk over time, showing that a processof gradual socialization into particular interactional structures can be observed on themicro level. Overall, it can be said that longitudinal CA research is only beginning toproduce empirical evidence about developmental processes underlying the communicativeand interactional behaviors of teachers and learners in language classrooms. What remainsfor now is the preliminary insight that interaction serves both as process and product oflearning (Hall 2010) and that longitudinal CA research on topics in language developmentis a methodologically challenging undertaking (Markee 2008; Markee and Seo 2009).

Conclusion

I have presented a review of empirical studies analyzing language classroom discoursefrom a conversation analytic perspective. From the micro-perspective afforded by theanalysis of the moment-by-moment unfolding of classroom interaction, we have seen thatthis kind of interaction is built on an intricate architecture comprised of various participa-tion structures. Language classroom discourse is by no means restricted to the linguisticand interactional execution of particular tasks by learners, but rather reveals a microcosmof locally relevant participant orientations. Through language classroom discourse, variousidentities are being negotiated by teachers and learners respectively, and such perceivedand interactionally realized roles may affect participants’ access to particular interactionalresources in the process of teaching and ⁄or learning. Furthermore, we have seen thatclassroom interaction is both the process and product of gradual socialization and negotia-tion over time. The reviewed studies have in common that they document how talk-in-interaction actually works in instructed language learning settings rather than assertinghow it should theoretically work. Ultimately, such inquiry has moved the field beyondthe exclusive focus on question–answer sequences or the IRF sequence (Waring 2009).



The pedagogical implications of CA-informed classroom studies for instructed lan-guage learning are emerging only slowly (Freeman 2007; Lantolf and Johnson 2007;Mori 2007). However, CA appears to have several promising applications for languageteachers and methodologists. For one, CA may inform the format and interactionaldesign of language learning tasks in the classroom. Second, a CA-informed understand-ing of the sequential unfolding of talk in teacher–whole class interaction may informteachers’ interactional practices (Lazaraton and Ishihara 2005; Wong and Zhang Waring2009). This applies similarly to teachers’ conceptions of what kind of tasks studentsengage in during class time and of how to structure them. A third avenue is the crea-tion and evaluation of instructional materials, including assessment. Wong (2002, 2007)evaluates textbook dialogs with CA techniques and calls for the consideration of someof the principles underlying naturally occurring conversation when instructional materialsthat feature ‘natural’ talk are created. Barraja-Rohan (1997) and Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm (2006) discuss how CA-informed findings can be integrated into the sec-ond ⁄ foreign language classroom as learning targets, Huth (2007, 2010) provides guidancefor materials development in this vein and also addresses how such pedagogical interven-tion may foster intercultural learning (Huth 2006). A number of studies have appliedCA techniques in the context of interactive oral proficiency testing, offering directionnot only on what to evaluate in student performance in oral tests, but also on how toconduct such tests (Egbert 1998; He 1998; Jenkins and Parra 2003; Kim and Suh 1998;Lazaraton 2002).

We end with a methodological caution (see Zuengler and Mori 2002 for a detailedcross-methodological discussion). Even if CA is able to provide important analytic toolsfor the analysis of classroom interaction (e.g. sequences, adjacency pairs, repair), theinsight gleaned from applying these tools, in keeping with CA’s ethnomethodologicalroots, does not primarily establish linguistic structures akin to syntactic ‘rules’ along a lin-guistic-descriptivist program. As Seedhouse (2007) notes, one is well advised to avoidusing CA as a handy codification system of patterned behaviors observable in instructedlanguage learning. CA’s ethnomethodological principles have been devised from the out-set to uncover the interactional processes underlying naturally occurring talk and howthat talk is shaped by the social action of the speakers involved. When applying suchresearch to the language classroom, the analyst’s work, accordingly, is not to merely‘code’ speakers’ interactional behavior, which would reverse the intended emic analysisinto an etic one. Rather, the goal is to trace the social action achieved by speakersthrough their interactional behavior, ultimately in order to answer the questions of ‘howthey do this’ (Seedhouse 2007:527) and to what effect. Beyond some of the practicalapplications outlined above, the theoretical implications of such research presently awaitsystematic consideration and integration into our larger models of language classroomcommunication with all its goals, functions, and affordances for learning.

Short Biography

Thorsten Huth’s research is located at the intersection of language and social interaction,second language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy. He has authored papers inthese areas for Modern Language Journal, Journal of Pragmatics, Language Teaching Research, DieUnterrichtspraxis ⁄Teaching German, and Multilingua. His current research investigates howsocial interaction is implicated in the emergence and development of non-primarylanguages and how pragmatics can be taught in the foreign language classroom. He holds aPhD from the University of Kansas and teaches at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

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Note

* Correspondence address: Thorsten Huth, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Southern Illinois University, 1000Faner Drive, Carbondale, IL 62901 4521, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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Conversation Analysis and Language Classroom Discourse