Interactional practices in language teaching and learning: understandings and applications gained through conversation analysis

Conversation analysis (CA) provides researchers with a set of microanalytic tools and a solid set of research findings about human interaction as it naturally occurs in both ordinary, everyday interactions and in interactions that occur in institutional settings. It has its roots in a sociological, and specifically, ethnomethodological research tradition (Garfinkel, 1967; Heritage, 1984)that is focused on uncovering the orderliness of everyday practices of members of society. Since the pioneering work of Sacks, Schegloff and Jefferson in the 60’s and early 70’s (Sacks, 1992), there is now an impressive set of findings about the organization oftalk. Three important corner stones uncovered by this research are turn-taking (the rules that govern how the next speaker is selected), sequential organisation (how turns are organised into sequences such as questions and answers) and epistemics (how speakers work on establishing common knowledge states). This paper is concerned with explicating new findings that conversation analysis has brought to our attention on language teaching and learning, and how these findings can impact pedagogy. By examining transcripts of early childhood interactions, classroom and test-taker talk in foreign languages, through the Question and Answer and third turn sequence, the paper will focus on the language alternation (also referred to as code-switching) practices, on the “performance” of students in speaking, both in the classroom and in high stakes tests such as IELTS, on examiner talk and on a child’s development of interactional competence. The paper will end with practical considerations for improving speaking.