Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts (New Perspectives on Language and Education): 63 - Hardcover

Hanh Thi Nguyen; Taiane Malabarba

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1788922883 ISBN 13: 9781788922883

Publisher: Multilingual Matters, 2019

Synopsis

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners' development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction. With a decided focus on English-as-a-Foreign-Language contexts, the studies involve varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults, in different learning environments around the world. The insights gained will be of interest to EFL professionals, as well as teacher trainers, policymakers and researchers.

About this title

About the Author

Hanh thi Nguyen is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English and Applied Linguistics at Hawai'i Pacific University. Her research interests include the development of interactional competence in a second or professional language, social interaction in language learning situations and learners' transforming identities. Taiane Malabarba is Assistant Professor in the Language Department at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil. Her research interests include EFL teaching and learning, classroom interaction, language policy and teacher education.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts

By Hanh Thi Nguyen

Multilingual Matters

Copyright © 2019 Hanh thi Nguyen, Taiane Malabarba and the authors of individual chapters
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78892-288-3

Contents

Acknowledgements, vii, 
Contributors, ix, 
1 Introduction: Using Conversation Analysis to Understand the Realities of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Learning, Teaching and Testing Taiane Malabarba and Hanh thi Nguyen, 1, 
Part 1: Learners' Development of Interactional Competence, 
2 Embodied and Occasioned Learnables and Teachables in an Early EFL Classroom Maria Vanessa aus der Wieschen and S0ren Wind Eskildsen, 31, 
3 Developing Interactional Competence in a Lingua Franca at the Workplace: An Ethnomethodologically Endogenous Account Hanh thi Nguyen, 59, 
Part 2: Teaching and Testing Practices as Dynamic Processes, 
4 Looking Beyond IRF Moves in EFL Classroom Interaction in China Jingya Li, 87, 
5 EFL Trainee Teachers' Orientations to Students' Non-understanding: A Focus on Task Instructions Dilara Somuncu and Olcay Sert, 110, 
6 Handling Unprepared-for Contingencies in an Interactional Language Test: Student Initiation of Correction as a Collaborative Accomplishment Eric Hauser, 132, 
7 Closing Up Testing: Interactional Orientation to a Timer During a Paired EFL Oral Proficiency Test Tim Greer, 159, 
Part 3: Sociocultural and Ideological Forces in Language Teaching, 
8 The 'Power Game': Interactional Asymmetries in EFL Collaborative Language Teaching Josephine Lee, 193, 
9 Collision of Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces in Iranian EFL Classroom Interaction Mostafa Pourhaji, 220, 
10 'In English, Sorry': Participants' Orientation to the English-only Policy in Beginning-level EFL Classroom Interaction Taiane Malabarba, 244, 
11 Teaching English in Marginalized Contexts: Constructing Relevance in an EFL Classroom in Rural Southern Mexico Peter Sayer, Taiane Malabarba and Leslie C. Moore, 268, 
12 Commentary: Fault Lines in Global EFL Johannes Wagner, 295, 
Index, 307, 

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Using Conversation Analysis to Understand the Realities of English-as-a-Foreign-Language Learning, Teaching and Testing

Taiane Malabarba and Hanh thi Nguyen

1 Introduction

It has been estimated that, by 2020, there will be about 2 billion users of English worldwide – the majority of whom are non-native English speakers, outnumbering native speakers at a ratio of about 4:1 (British Council, 2013). Another estimate puts the number of learners of English as a foreign language at 100 million to 1.1 billion (Baker, 2011: 84). In the European Union, for example, English is the most widely taught foreign language (Cenoz & Gorter, 2013: 591; Eurostat, 2016). As English continues its global dominance as a lingua franca, it is crucial to understand the processes and issues in English education around the world.

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of contexts where English is an additional language or a workplace lingua franca, that is, in English as a foreign language (EFL) contexts. EFL contexts deserve research attention because they are distinct from contexts in which English is taught and learned as a second language in the target-language environment, that is, ESL contexts. In our view, EFL contexts differ in three main aspects from ESL contexts, and each difference poses practical problems for learners and teachers.

The most important difference is in the availability of the target language. Whereas most ESL learners have ready opportunities to use English 'in the wild' outside of the classroom (e.g. Barraja-Rohan, 2015; Yagi, 2007; see also Language Learning in the Wild, 2017; Wagner, 2015), EFL learners' opportunities to use English are mostly limited to instructional settings such as classrooms (e.g. Cenoz, 2007; Hauser, 2009; Herazo Rivera, 2010; Rao, 2002), arranged online lessons (e.g. Balaman & Sert, 2017; Kozar, 2015; Nguyen, 2016) and class exchange activities online (e.g. Whyte & Cutrim Schmid, 2014). Outside of instructional settings, EFL learners may be exposed to the target language as consumers of the internet and entertainment (music, movies, games, and so on) (e.g. Piirainen-Marsh & Tainio, 2009) or as users of English as a lingua franca at the workplace (e.g. Firth, 2009a, 2009b). How do students and teachers in classroom interaction orient to this limited access to the target language? For example, do teachers strive to use English in their own speech and police the use of English by students to increase their target language exposure and practice? Outside of the classroom, how does language learning 'in the wild' take place in EFL contexts?

A second and related aspect that sets EFL contexts apart from ESL contexts is the purpose of language learning. Most ESL learners often have immediate needs to use the target language in their daily lives or future academic and professional careers for immersion in or integration into the target society (e.g. Duff et al., 2000; Menard-Warwick, 2007). In contrast, the relevance of English to EFL learners in many parts of the world, despite general perceptions of English's socio-economic advantages, is often vague and undefined (e.g. Butler, 2011; Cenoz, 2007; Chang & Goswami, 2011), with the exception of workplace settings where English is used as a lingua franca (e.g. Firth, 2009a, 2009b). How do teachers connect their lessons to the students' life-world experiences outside of the EFL classroom? How do learners make sense of teaching and testing activities in the target language? At the workplace, how do learners develop language skills in situ as they carry out work-related tasks?

A third and final major difference between EFL and ESL contexts lies in the common language and culture shared by teacher and students. While the teacher and students in an ESL classroom may come from various languages and cultures (e.g. Auerbach, 1993; Nguyen & Kellogg, 2010), the teacher and students in an EFL classroom typically speak the same first language (L1) and share the same cultural values as well as expectations about teaching and learning (e.g. Canagarajah, 1999; Cenoz, 2007). The questions are: Does this shared linguistic and cultural background pull the EFL teachers and students away from the target language in actual classroom interaction and, if so, how does this take place? How do they negotiate and resolve the tension between their expectations and the assumptions of teaching methodologies imported from English-speaking countries?

The authors in this collection will focus on how learners and teachers orient to the above constraints and affordances in English education around the world with respect to three facets: (1) learners' development of interactional competence; (2) the organization of teaching and testing practices; and (3) sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction. Our goal is to provide close-up glimpses into how English is learned, taught and assessed at the local, moment-to-moment level, both within and outside of the classroom. Such detailed analyses can inform English language teaching (ELT) professionals, teacher trainers, policy makers and researchers about how language learning, teaching and testing are conducted and accomplished, given the constraints and the possibilities afforded by interactional resources as well as social, cultural and political forces in diverse settings around the world.

The present volume extends current understandings by going beyond the description of EFL settings and highlighting specific issues, such as: the negotiation of language choices (in Brazil); teacher–teacher power relationships in co-teaching (in Korea); the tension between teachers' control and students' initiations or displays of non-understanding (in Iran and Turkey); teachers' management of initiation-response-feedback (IRF) sequences to encourage student participation in large classes (in China); and the relevance of English education to marginalized students (in Mexico). Further, this volume covers not only teaching but also learning and testing, involving both classroom settings and settings outside the classroom, such as the workplace (in Vietnam) and oral proficiency tests (in Japan). Finally, and most importantly, the present volume leaves the frequently researched domain of ESL contexts and instead maintains a decided focus on EFL contexts, spanning the continents of Asia, Central and South America, and Europe, and involving varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults.

While the chapters in this book cover diverse teaching contexts in several continents, they all draw primarily on the data-driven and microanalytic lens of conversation analysis (CA). Since this is the book's common backdrop, we will begin with an overview of CA's conceptual framework and methodological procedure.

2 Conversation Analytic Perspective

Conversation analysis is a program of inquiry that aims to understand tacit social order through the concrete details of talk-in-interaction (Have, 2007; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Sacks, 1995; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 2007). Sharing ethnomethodology's standpoint (Garfinkel, 1967, 2002), CA is concerned with the practical methods and commonsense reasoning by members of a culture in everyday activities, and thus takes social interaction as the milieu where social order is created, maintained and negotiated. More specifically, CA considers social interaction to be 'the basic and primordial environment for the development, the use, and the learning of natural language' (Schegloff, 1996: 4, emphasis added). In the paragraphs below, we will outline CA's foundational principles and methodological procedures, and discuss the integration between 'applied' CA and compatible research traditions in the analysis of language teaching and learning.

2.1 Conversation analytic underpinnings

At its core, CA is defined by (a) its assumption that social interaction is inherently orderly, (b) its emic stance, and (c) its treatment of context as indexically enacted in talk (Have, 2007; Hutchby & Wooffitt, 1998; Sacks, 1995; Sacks et al., 1974; Schegloff, 1997).

CA maintains that social interaction, albeit seemingly messy, is systematic and orderly at all points. That is, participants' conduct such as pauses, restarts and voice variations are not haphazard, trivial, redundant or meaningless (as in a narrow conceptualization of linguistic competence a la Chomsky, 1965), but are participants' commonsense methods to construct social order and culture in situ (Sacks, 1995, Vol. 1, Lecture 33). These systematic practices are both context free (in the sense that they can be recognized and utilized across contexts) and context dependent (in the sense that they are mobilized locally, with sensitivity to the organization of a given moment in talk) (Sacks et al., 1974). For example, Goodwin (1981) demonstrated that a speaker's gaze direction and turn disturbances (such as cut-off sounds and pauses) are systematic practices that are placed sequentially to elicit a recipient's mutual gaze and response. While these practices are context free, they are also context dependent in the sense that participants in a particular moment of talk employ them contingently in the context of the prior turns and the actions being achieved at that moment. This foundational assumption in CA permeates throughout the chapters in this book, as they engage with a range of issues in language teaching and learning.

Further, it is important to note that, in order to maintain 'order at all points' (Sacks, 1995: 484), participants draw on their competence as members of a culture, that is, the ability to manage language-specific realizations of universal, generic forms of organization in human interaction (such as turn-taking mechanism, sequence organization, turn design and repair) to jointly achieve social actions with others (Shegloff, 2006; see also Hall, 2018). Thus, newcomers to a language and culture, such as second language (L2) learners, will need to develop language-specific realizations of interactional practices in order to participate in interaction in the target language (Schegloff, 1995: xlvii). The chapters by Nguyen and by aus der Wieschen and Eskildsen in this book focus specifically on this topic of interactional competence development.

In order to understand members' methods for what they are, CA takes a decidedly emic stance – one that results from 'studying behavior as from inside the system', similar to how phonemes reflect the perceptual reality of sounds to speakers of the language (Pike, 1967: 37). Sharing ethnomethodology's departure from top-down, exogenous theories in order to embark on an endogenous investigation of social order as it is practically accomplished in everyday activities, CA requires that social interaction be studied from the participants' perspectives (Have, 2007). Methodologically, this requirement means that, when studying cultures different from one's own vernacular culture (institutional settings included), the researcher needs to acquire members' competence (Moerman, 1988; Sidnell, 2013). The authors in this volume achieved this by becoming members themselves (e.g. Greer, Hauser and Malabarba), living in the target community for an extended period of time as a participant-observer (e.g. Sayer and Malabarba & Moore) or learning about the studied setting through interviews and field observation (e.g. aus der Wieschen & Eskildsen, J. Lee and Nguyen). CA's emic viewpoint has brought a shift in research on classroom interaction. Rather than relying on propositional knowledge about teaching such as idealized models, CA research on language teaching focuses on 'identifying and characterizing classroom interaction' by looking at classroom talk 'on its own terms' (He, 2004: 580). The requirement of an emic stance also means that when learning processes are examined, theories of learning are not imposed on the data, but the analysis of what is learned and how it is learned is driven by the learners' and co-participants' conduct in talk (e.g. aus der Wieschen & Eskildsen, this volume; Nguyen, this volume).

With its insistence on an emic approach to data, CA sees context as not assumed or given, but rather as reflexively constructed in talk (Schegloff, 1997; Sidnell, 2007). Features of context, while perhaps known by the researcher, can only become analytically relevant when oriented to and occasioned by the participants through observable conduct. This view aims to avoid taking for granted participants' commonsense actions and to force the analyst to focus on what participants actually do locally and contingently to construct their social realities. By suspending a priori categories such as 'teacher', 'tester' and 'student' until they are demonstrably indexed in details of talk, the analyst can empirically uncover the practices that participants employ to achieve teaching, testing and learning (e.g. Greer, this volume; Hauser, this volume). Such an approach to data also enables the analyst to understand how participants may construct, negotiate or resist the reproduction of social, cultural and political forces (e.g. J. Lee; Malabarba; Pourhaji; Sayer et al., all in this volume).

CA's three key underpinnings – its assumption that social interaction is orderly at all points, its emic perspective and its treatment of context as indexical – are operationalized in CA's methodological procedure, which will be described next.

2.2 Conversation analytic procedure

Since CA is concerned with how social order can be achieved locally in everyday activities, CA work begins with recording naturallyoccurring conversations, in video or audio forms. In the case of ELT research, this means recording language classroom interactions, test sessions and learning situations as they occur spontaneously, without any experimental design or setup. This type of data is considered institutional talk which, in contrast to ordinary conversations, is 'goal-oriented in institutionally relevant ways' and is conducted with institution-specific lexical choice, turn design, sequence organization and overall structural organization (Drew & Heritage, 1992: 22, 29–45). In data collection, CA researchers are mindful of the 'observer's paradox' (Labov, 1972) and do their best to minimize intrusion in order to assure that the data reflect the participants' social realities, such as getting to know the participants before recording (Sayer et al., this volume), concealing the camera behind natural objects in the given setting (J. Lee, this volume), or asking the participants to record themselves (Nguyen, this volume). (For further discussion on data collection in general, see Mondada, 2013; and on classroom data collection, see Kimura et al., 2018.)

Once the data have been collected, they are transcribed in close detail to capture the participants' methods of achieving social actions. Most CA researchers, including the authors in this volume, use the transcription notation system developed by Gail Jefferson over the years and described in detail in 2004 (see Appendix). This system pays attention to not only the words being said but also (1) the temporal and sequential relationship of talk such as periods of silence and overlapped talk, (2) speech delivery features such as intonation, volume, speed and voice variations, and (3) actions accompanying talk such as laughter tokens, audible in-breaths, embodied actions and spatial orientations. Since the analyst does not know in advance which details will be treated as relevant by the participants, the goal of CA transcription is to record as much as possible the fine-grained details of talk (Heritage, 1984). The transcript serves as the starting point of analysis as well as evidence for analytical claims. (For further discussion of CA transcription, see Hepburn & Bolden, 2013, 2017; Jenks, 2011.)

Through 'unmotivated looking' (Sacks, 1984) at the data, the analyst makes data-generated observations about how the interaction unfolds, from the participants' perspectives. Essentially, these observations aim to answer the question, 'why that now?' (Schegloff & Sacks, 1974: 241) by examining the participants conducts in, before and after the phenomenon in question. Even when the researcher has preconceived interests, such as how teachers handle unknowing responses from students (Somuncu & Sert, this volume), those interests need to be suspended in this initial approach to data. Crucial in CA work is the honest engagement with details of talk 'as they are' since all conducts in conversations exhibit social order. From such disciplined observations, a recurrent phenomenon of interest may be identified and collected for further analysis. Each chapter in this book presents a collection of a phenomenon that has been generated in this way from a larger data pool. For example, from a corpus of student-led instruction activities in an oral proficiency test, Hauser identified and collected cases of error corrections for further examination of how the students and teachers orient to these corrections. In building the analysis, CA researchers may rely on previous findings on the identified phenomenon to understand its context-free nature, while paying attention to its sequential context and endogenous actions in the talk at hand. (For further discussion of CA analytical steps, see Sidnell, 2013.)

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts by Hanh Thi Nguyen. Copyright © 2019 Hanh thi Nguyen, Taiane Malabarba and the authors of individual chapters. Excerpted by permission of Multilingual Matters.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

Edition details

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1788922883
• ISBN 13: 9781788922883
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 328
• Editor: Hanh Thi Nguyen, Taiane Malabarba