Achieving transitions from one item to another in pairwork speaking activities
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| Year of publication | 2019 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | In English as a foreign language (EFL) classes, students frequently speak in pairs. Although the items for discussion are typically fixed in advance and materialized in a list of questions or topics in a handout or textbook, the actual transitions from one item to another are managed locally by the students. Using conversation analysis, this paper investigates how the students coordinate their talk and the broader embodied and material resources (Streeck, Goodwin, & LeBaron, 2011) when transitioning from one item to another, i.e. how they achieve closure of one topic or sequence related to one item by making a new item from the list relevant. Following the seminal paper by Schegloff and Sacks (1973), studies have shown that the participants rely on the material and embodied resources when achieving conversational closings (e.g. Laurier, 2008) and activity closings (e.g. Broth & Mondada, 2013). Modaff (2003) has shown how speakers manage the transition from opening to an institutional task by looking away from a co-participant toward a task-relevant physical object. In educational settings, sequence closings have been investigated, for example, by Aberg (2015, pp. 183–208), who analyzed how students and teachers transition from instruction to the closing phase of the instructional encounters. This paper builds on audio- and video-recordings of 22 teaching hours in higher education and 15 teaching hours in upper-secondary education (multiple cameras and voice-recorders were used), all of which were recorded in intermediate EFL classes in Czechia. The findings suggest that in addition to verbal resources, such as uttering “okay” – “yeah” (cf. Schegloff & Sacks, 1973), the speakers make the transition relevant by looking at the list of items in close coordination with manipulation thereof (touching or lifting the handout up from the desk) and with changes in body posture. The analysis focuses on the sequential organization of these moves, by which the speakers make the next item relevant. When both students have displayed their orientation to the list, they achieve the transition to the next item, typically by reading it out loud. This paper adds to the understanding of how EFL students negotiate the transition from one item to another in pairwork speaking activities. |
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