using conversation analysis in the second language

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LANGUAGETEACHINGRESEARCH

Using conversation analysis in the second language classroom to teach interactional competence

Anne-Marie Barraja-RohanMonash University, Australia

AbstractThis article focuses on the use of conversation analysis (CA) to help teaching interactional competence in English to adult second language learners from lower to intermediate levels. To set the context, this article gives a brief overview on the use of CA in second language research as well as considering the construct of interactional competence in second language teaching. Based on classroom research, the article demonstrates how CA applied in the second language classroom was effective initially in raising students’ awareness of both the mechanisms and norms of spoken interaction, and also eventually in helping them to become analysts of conversation and more effective conversationalists. To better understand what CA concepts needed to be taught a conversation analysis of the students’ undirected conversations was undertaken revealing interactional problems not noticed through traditional methods of investigation. It is therefore suggested that a CA-informed pedagogical approach can help to teach interactional competence or competencies, by using materials designed for that purpose.

Keywordsinteractional competence, teacher action research, ESL teaching, conversation analysis, learners’ interactions

I Introduction

1 The application of conversation analysis to second language teaching

Conversation analysis (CA) is starting to make inroads into second or foreign (L2) lan-guage teaching as there is an increasing body of research conducted from a conversation

Corresponding author:Anna-Marie Barraja-Rohan, PO Box 384, Elwood, 3184 VIC, AustraliaEmail: [email protected]

412878 LTRXXX10.1177/1362168811412878Barraja-RohanLanguage Teaching Research

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2 Language Teaching Research

analytic perspective into second language use or acquisition (Wong, 1994, 2000; Tanaka, 1999; Brouwer, 2000; Carroll, 2000, 2005; Markee, 2000, 2007, 2008; Kurhila, 2001, 2006; Mori, 2003; Olsher, 2003; He, 2004; Wagner & Gardner, 2004; Golato, 2005; Richards & Seedhouse, 2005; Hellermann, 2006, 2009; Gardner, 2007; Kasper & Kim, 2007; Pekarek Doehler & Ziegler, 2007; Firth, 2009; Kasper, 2009; Markee & Seo, 2009; Mori & Hasegawa, 2009). If conversation analysis has now become more widely accepted as a research methodology into L2 use and acquisition, its application to teaching L2 adults is still in its infancy although one of the earliest records of its use goes back to the late 1990s. Indeed Barraja-Rohan (1997) explained the relevance of conversation analysis to L2 teaching to enhance the learning of L2 conversational skills. She demonstrated that sociocultural norms were reflected in openings, closings and adjacency pairs (e.g. greetings, leave-taking, invitations, and requests); consequently, focusing on these concepts made L2 sociocultural norms salient to students who could then employ them in L2. She also considered other CA concepts such as turn-taking (including overlaps and listener responses), preference organization,1 as well as pros-ody and kinesics. More recently other articles testify that CA has been used successfully in the L2 classroom for various purposes. For instance, Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm (2006) examined the acquisition of pragmatic functions such as telephone openings in German. Working from a CA perspective they contrasted the use of telephone openings in German with English to point out the different sociocultural norms between the two languages. Their article illustrates the positive outcome of a CA-informed instruction by comparing a pair of students’ L2 telephone openings pre- and post-instruction. Another study by Packett (2005) indicated that CA was used in an English for specific purposes (journalism) class to teach the specifics of news interviews and, particularly, insertion sequences for an audience. News interviews have been the object of much study in conversation analysis (see Heritage; 1985; Clayman, 1988, 1992; Greatbatch, 1988, 1992; Heritage & Greatbatch, 1991, etc.); thus, such a body of knowledge consti-tutes a useful and readily available resource to teach the complexities of spoken interac-tions in various settings.

2 The relevance of conversation analysis to second language teaching and research

Conversation analysis has vast implications for L2 teaching and learning because it has been able to reveal the ‘social organization of natural language-in-use’ (Button & Lee, 1987, p.2). The conversation analyst’s task is to examine how conversationalists achieve order and social organization. To be able to do this CA relies on naturally occurring spo-ken interactions to explain its orderliness, sequence organization and turn-taking. The principle of using authentic conversations can be equally applied to the L2 class so that learners can be exposed to real life language. Its value is in the social dimension that CA brings to the classroom and the view of L2 learning as socially distributed knowledge (Mondada, 2006; Firth & Wagner, 2007). Language from this perspective is no longer regarded as a set of linguistic items, and learners are no longer considered as deficient L2 speakers but rather as novices as well as a social entity trying to come to grips with a new sociocultural environment. Therefore they are no longer regarded as a machine, a



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metaphor used for too long in traditional second language acquisition (SLA) where there is input, output, uptake, etc. (Kramsch, 2002).

Using a CA pedagogical approach implies using real life language and thus delving into authentic situations.2 Social interactions are at the core of human activities, so adult L2 learners have a vested interest in learning the intricacies of talk-in-interaction; how-ever, learners may lack opportunities to engage in social interaction in L2 even while living in the L2 country (see Roberts & Cooke, 2009). Making explicit key L2 interac-tional resources that interactants employ can facilitate this learning as learners can notice differences and similarities between L1 and L2 (Mitchell & Myles, 1998). This is where CA can enhance students’ learning by providing insights in talk-in-interaction, which can be used as a ‘grammar’ of interaction. This point has also been made by Schegloff (personal communication, August 2007). He has noted that L2 students at UCLA, in particular from South East Asian countries, take a particular interest in CA. He remarks that:

One element of this attraction, I have come to believe, is the role Conversation Analysis (CA) plays in their progressive mastery of English. Most of our graduate students have gone about as far as they can go in mastering English by the end of their first year of graduate studies, building, of course, on their previous course work and lived experience devoted to learning the language; their efforts to make further progress by the traditional methods of language pedagogy seem to have been frustrated. It has occurred to me that one attraction CA has had for them – aside (of course) from its appeal as a method of research – has been analytically-informed access to how language is actually employed in the course of mundane, daily activities.

Native speakers implicitly acquire a number of features of interactional competence (IC) such as the use of response tokens, adjacency pairs, preference organization, turn-taking, etc. Interactional competence involves, among other skills, precision timing and a quick analysis of speakers’ turns. For instance, when a speaker takes over from a previ-ous speaker, he or she may do so at or near a turn transition relevance place (thereby occasioning a terminal overlap), a move that requires attention to grammar, pragmatics and/or intonation (Schegloff et al., 1996). Turn-taking is a delicate and complex manoeu-vre that necessitates constant monitoring on the part of the participants (see Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974). If native speakers are asked to describe such complex interactional machinery they are incapable of giving detailed explanations. This is the very reason why CA developed, i.e. to inform on how speakers of any particular com-munity interact. Thus CA offers teachers insights into this interactional machinery, and they can then transfer this knowledge to L2 students by making it explicit. Interactional features need to be taught in context through the use of recorded and transcribed natu-rally occurring conversations, which will form the basis of the lessons. The features of interactional competence relevant to L2 students will depend upon their level of L2 mas-tery and include the following:

• The turn-taking system, which involves how and when to take the floor, overlap-ping, the role of gaze and intonation, etc. The turn-taking system is also linked to the role of participants. Indeed there is a primary speaker (e.g. in story-telling the story teller takes longer turns-at-talk) and a listener (also called secondary speaker




who, in the case of story-telling, makes minimal contributions), so these roles have implications on the turn-taking system;

• The sequential organization of utterances, which entails adjacency pairs. Adjacency pairs are connected to the preference organization system, such as preferred response (e.g. granting a request) or dispreferred response (e.g. refusing a request);

• Actions performed by interactants: Interactants use talk to perform actions and orient to them, as for instance in the case of the adjacency pairs of greeting and leave-taking;

• Repairs, i.e. being able to know when and how to initiate and accomplish a repair;• Intersubjectivity: How intersubjectivity is achieved, in other words how interact-

ants make meaning to each other and display common understanding and knowledge;

• Paralinguistic activities, which are produced purposefully and are therefore rele-vant and meaningful to the participants, such as pauses (e.g. the meaning of silence prefacing a dispreferred response as opposed to intraturn pause), intona-tion, gaze, gestures, perturbations (stuttering, hesitation markers, etc.), laughter, and others;

• Context: Context is created by the participants, their utterances and actions, which reflect their relationship, e.g. how they address or greet each other.

As CA explicates talk-in-interaction, it provides teachers with a structure of conversation and an approach to the teaching of interactional competence.

A few researchers have attempted to describe IC (which is examined in more detail in the next section), which can be said to comprise pragmatic competence3 and conversa-tional syntax,4 i.e. spoken grammar, as well as embodied actions. Briefly, interactional competence5 can be described as the ability to:

1. engage in various interactional events to co-construct talk with various partici-pants and display pragmatic knowledge through the use of conversational syntax, including paralinguistics, kinesics, facial expressions, gaze, and proxemics for social/institutional purposes; and

2. jointly manage the turn-taking system with co-participants adopting appropriate interactional roles. This entails an understanding and demonstration of how turns are designed and responding to turns in a coherent and sequential manner, dis-playing common understanding and repairing any threat to or breakdown in com-munication, showing engagement and empathy when relevant or intended, as well as accomplishing social actions befitting the interactional context and social/institutional goals.

In the following section the construct of interactional competence or competencies is explored through a brief historical perspective that shows how CA came to be consid-ered. Next, the design of the present study is outlined, describing the students who participated and how the study was conducted. Then the teaching methodology is examined, which includes a rationale for teaching particular CA concepts as well as an illustration of how some of these concepts were taught. An example of the teaching



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materials designed for the experimental course is reproduced, and a comparison of two L2 students’ pre- and post-instruction conversations, Truc and Kim, is conducted to show the development of their L2 interactional competence resulting from the CA-instructed conversation course. Comments from the evaluation questionnaire given to the students at the end of the course are provided to illustrate students’ percep-tions of the course in relation to:

1. their understanding and learning the concepts taught;2. the improvement of their speaking and listening skills; and3. the transferability of the CA concepts to the outside world when interacting with

other learners and native speakers.

The article concludes with a discussion regarding the applicability of a CA-based approach for teaching interactional competencies as advocated by Barraja-Rohan (1997) and later by Kasper (2006), and its benefits to the learners involved.

II The construct of interactional competence

Conversation analysts understood that in examining talk-in-interaction they were in fact dealing with the interactional competence (IC) of members of a particular community (Psathas, 1990). However, this view has taken some time to be embraced and was rede-fined by the L2 research community to address issues pertaining to L2 research particu-larly in relation to teaching conversational skills in a cross-cultural setting. Since the 1990s the concept of interactional competence has gradually developed in L2 research and has gained momentum. Kramsch (1986) was the first researcher to envisage the teaching of interactional competence, and she urged researchers to move away from regarding language as a ‘functional tool’. She critiqued the Proficiency Movement for focusing on accuracy and not taking into account the dynamic process of human interac-tions, where there is collaboration, negotiation and accommodation with a focus on com-munication. Kramsch considered interactional competence as part of the curriculum within an intercultural framework. Her notion of ‘an interactionally-oriented curriculum’ (1986, pp. 369) consisted of critically evaluating language and reflecting on discourse and how language in use was regulated. This was indeed a ground-breaking way of approaching language in the context of language teaching and assessment.

The examination of the construct of interactional competence was initially explored by Oksaar (1983, 1990, 1999), who proposed a complex model to explain in detail what this interactional competence entails. In a similar vein to Kramsch (1986), he defined spoken language as a complex medium of communication. Oksaar’s premise was based on the fact that culture was often underlying human interactions in multilingual situations. His model (1983) was empirically based on the work that he had conducted with L2 learners in various countries over several years. He reflected on the kind of factors impacting on interactional competence and the occurrence of miscommunication. In his model he included paralinguistic features, nonverbal behavior, and sociocultural norms, which he named ‘cultureme and behavioureme’, encompassing extraverbal behavior such as prox-emics, time and space (1983, pp. 247). He defined interactional competence as:




the ability of a person, in interactional situations to carry out and interpret verbal, paralinguistic, non-verbal and extraverbal communicative actions in two roles, that of the speaker and that of the hearer, according to the sociocultural and psychological rules of the group. (1990, pp. 530)

Kramsch (1986) too regarded the role of the listener and understood the intentionality of the message communicated as important; however, Oksaar (1990) added another ele-ment: that of extralinguistic behavior.

Hall (1995) also considered the IC construct, which included interactive practices. With this notion of interactive practices, Hall focused on the fact that there were conver-sational practices that were repeated, that were goal directed, and that played a socially cohesive role for a community. Furthermore, these interactive practices implied that the participants shared some common ground and meaning, which in turn resulted in setting up expectations about what was happening in the talk. Hence, there was pragmatic understanding and expectation. Her starting point was speech acts and their sequential organization, which has implications for turn-taking where topics are initiated and devel-oped, and which led to particular uses of lexis and syntax. Indeed, Hall considered that pragmatic competence played a significant part in communicative competence. This notion of interactive practices was further redefined at length by He and Young (1998), who named it ‘interactional competence’. Their notion comprised discursive practices, that is, knowledge of rhetorical scripts, turn-taking system, topic management and rec-ognition of boundaries between various speech activities. Where their work offered new contributions was in their consideration of the transition between interactional events and the collaborative aspect of talk-in-interaction. This new concept of IC was then applied by Young and Miller (2004). Young in his work on interactional competence has been inspired by CA and particularly by the concepts of co-construction, turn-taking and topic management. In a recent book,6 Young (2008) gives a more complete definition of interactional competence, which is ‘a relationship between the participants’ employment of linguistic and interactional resources and the contexts in which they are employed; the resources that interactional competence highlights are those of identity, language and interaction’ (2008, pp. 101). In this definition, Young adds two notions: that of contexts whereby interactional competence is context dependent, and that of identity, whereby participants co-construct particular identity or identities. His argument is that there are factors reflecting particular identities that can affect conversational style such as gender, social class, accent, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, profession and individual person-ality (2008, p.114), and any of these identities can be invoked by any of the participants, which can be ratified or rejected by the co-participant. Importantly Young notes that interactional competence does not reside in an individual’s ability to employ interac-tional resources but is related to how these resources are mutually and jointly used by the participants and the types of discursive practice.

Kasper (2006), who had advocated that pragmatic functions needed to be taught explicitly (Kasper, 1997) is now proposing to examine CA for second language acquisi-tion (SLA) as she states that: ‘As an approach to SLA, conversation analysis (CA) repre-sents one of several perspectives on L2 learning as a social practice’ (2006, pp. 83). She even advocates considering not just interactional competence in the light of CA princi-ples but also what she calls ‘interactional competencies’. She explains that interactional



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competence is not finite and that it involves a variety of resources, organization and abili-ties that participants bring to the interaction. Indeed, when adult speakers interact in a different language to their mother tongue they also rely to some extent on their L1 inter-actional competence, so the notion of interactional competencies is a valid one. Furthermore there are diverse situations with various participants, for instance in institu-tional talk, which would require a set of competencies that are somewhat different from those needed to conduct mundane conversation.

Inspired by Young’s work Kasper (2006, pp. 86) defines IC as follows:

to understand and produce social actions in their sequential contexts;

to take turns at talk in an organized fashion;

to format actions and turns, and construct epistemic and affective stance (Ochs, 1996), by drawing on different types of semiotic resources (linguistic, nonverbal, nonvocal), including register-specific resources;

to repair problems in speaking, hearing, and understanding;

to co-construct social and discursive identities through sequence organization, actions-in-interaction and semiotic resources (Goffman, 1981; Zimmerman, 1998);

to recognize and produce boundaries between activities, including transitions from states of contact to absence of contact (interactional openings, Schegloff, 1968; closings, Schegloff & Sacks, 1973) and transitions between activities during continued contact (Markee, 2004).

The references and the language employed to describe interactional competencies that Kasper refers to are heavily drawn from CA. We can therefore see how CA is now seri-ously considered in L2 research and can contribute to various areas of L2 research. Kasper (2006, pp. 87) even adds: ‘So defined, interactional competencies qualitatively expand SLA’s traditional learning object of grammatical and even pragmatic competence.’ This comment validates the statement made earlier that IC encompasses other competences such as grammatical (spoken grammar) and pragmatics. Moreover, adult L2 learners already possess IC in their first language and IC is a process that evolves during a lifetime as one is exposed to various settings, situations and interactants. The notion of IC is still being debated; however, what is presently of interest is how it has been applied in the L2 classroom not only to teach pragmatic functions like Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm’s (2006) study but overall IC, which is demonstrated in the following sections.

III Applying conversation analysis in the classroom: Study design, methodology and outcomes

1 Study design: Teacher action research and learners

The application of CA to teaching ESL to adult students arose from a teacher action research project (Haley & Rentz, 2002; Haley, 2005) initiated by the author, who was




trained in CA. This teacher action research resulted from a perceived need to improve the teaching of oral communication skills to facilitate students’ L2 socialization and social inclusion in the majority community. It had come to the teacher-researcher’s attention through her teaching experience that many of her ESL students lived rather isolated from the L2 community, and this impacted negatively upon their welfare and/or livelihood; language seemed to be a contributing factor to this isolation.

A number of steps were followed in this project that spanned two semesters.

• Step 1 was to examine in detail how students interacted without a teacher’s inter-vention. The teacher-researcher recorded students having a conversation with each other. These conversations were then analysed from a CA perspective. These conversations yielded interesting results in that L2 students either did not use or misused some L2 interactional resources. These conversations will be referred to as pre-instruction conversations.

• Step 2 was to find an interactional framework to treat the problems identified, and a CA approach seemed the most appropriate for the reasons indicated above. CA therefore provided the teacher-researcher with not only a tool to examine students’ interactional competence, but CA findings also provided the resources to remedy interactional difficulties.

• Step 3 was to identify what interactional features needed to be taught.• Step 4 was to find suitable teaching materials, which were supplemented with

additional resources created by the teacher-researcher. Teaching resources using a CA-based approach are rather scarce, and more materials need to be developed.7

• Step 5 was to set up the duration for the new conversation course, which was taught over 12 weeks.

• Step 6 was to refine the CA-based pedagogical approach using two different classes at different language levels. To improve the CA-based conversation course, the teacher-researcher initially recorded the conversation classes and used field notes based on classroom observations to reflect on the lessons taught.

• Step 7 was to monitor students’ progress and their responses to the new approach. This was achieved by recording students having a conversation with their peers during the course (which were conducted either in dyads or triads), and at the end of the course.

The conversations conducted at the end of the course are referred as post-instruction conversations. During these conversations students could choose their own conversa-tional partners and their topics, as no instructions were given in order to create a more convivial environment. Role-plays were not used to analyse students’ interactional com-petence because role-plays were not deemed to represent authentic language since there is no real social interest at stake. The recorded conversations were then examined using CA. Students were also given an evaluation questionnaire at the end of the conversation course to gauge their reactions to the new approach.

The teacher-researcher first applied CA to teaching a class of 20 adult migrants who were mostly long-term residents and who, despite having lived in Australia for a num-ber of years, had gained very limited L2 conversational ability. Indeed these students,



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who were primarily Vietnamese (apart from one Chinese and one Ethiopian), had been interacting within their own ethnic community and therefore had minimal contacts with the L2 wider community. These students had a real need to quickly improve their inter-actional competence so that they could better participate in and benefit from the L2 society, e.g. finding a job. These students are referred as Group 1. As the CA-oriented pedagogical approach proved successful, the teacher-researcher then set up an elective conversation class for a slightly more advanced group of students composed of mainly international students and some migrants; this group is referred to as Group 2. The same steps as outlined above were followed to teach Group 2. Similarly to Group 1, Group 2 students also had minimal L2 interactions with L1 speakers, which were generally lim-ited to brief service encounters. Group 2 international students tended to interact among themselves. The lack of social contact between L2 learners and the local population appears to be a recurrent phenomenon (see Yanhong Li & Kaye, 1998; Roberts & Cooke, 2009).

The duration of the course was 12 weeks, with two hours of tuition per week. Students attending any course were routinely tested at the beginning of the course using the ISLPR,8 and that included those who participated in the CA-based conversation course. Group 1 students were of lower intermediate language level (ISLPR 1).9 Their ages var-ied from early twenties to over 60. Their length of residency in Australia ranged from one year to 20 years. Group 1 had conversation classes as part of their curriculum.

Group 2 mainly included international students and a few migrants who were of inter-mediate language level (ISLPR 2).10 Their ages ranged from late teens to early twenties, and they originated from various Asian countries (China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Thailand and Vietnam). The Group 2 students had been living in Australia from a few months to one year, and chose to come to the conversation class as an elective. In addi-tion to the 10 regular attenders (who were international students) to this conversation class elective, there were other students who occasionally came. The latter comprised both migrants and international students from various countries (including South-East Asia, Africa and one from Europe).

Since students in both groups were fully functional adults it was assumed that they were interactionally competent in their L1. Interactional transfers from L1 to L2 were not necessarily automatic as demonstrated in Section 3a.

The aim of the course was twofold. First, it was to raise students’ awareness of the features of spoken interaction; that is, to make it explicit to students what interactants actually do in real life interactions, i.e. interactants analyse and evaluate each other’s conduct (Seedhouse, 2004, pp. 10). Second, it was to develop an understanding of the structure of conversation in order to turn students into ‘conversation analysts’ by observing real life conversations. The overall aim was to encourage students to partici-pate more effectively in conversations with both native and nonnative speakers of English.

2 Teaching methodology

The teacher-researcher created materials and activities to teach CA concepts, which included entire audio or videotaped naturally occurring, or unscripted conversations




Figure 1 Teaching methodology

conducted by native speakers. She also used a CA-based course book (Beyond talk; Barraja-Rohan & Pritchard, 1997), which uses videoed unscripted and naturally occur-ring conversations, which are transcribed using a simplified CA version to make it more accessible to L2 learners. In Beyond talk only some conventions considered rel-evant for highlighting turn-taking devices are retained (e.g. overlaps, intonation con-tour, sentence stress, softer talk and silence), and intonation contours are represented by an upward or downward arrow. The conversations designed for teaching CA con-cepts were transcribed according to Beyond talk simplified CA conventions. Interactional features of interest were isolated after analysis of the conversations, and teaching activities were designed. These features are outlined below. It was through their thorough understanding of those features and resources that the students were able to re-use them in a meaningful way. These features represented the focus of the



Barraja-Rohan 11

lessons. The teaching methodology was the one used in Barraja-Rohan’s (2000, p. 71)11 article, as reproduced in Figure 1.

Barraja-Rohan (2000) does not specify what activities were used in the awareness-raising phase. In the present study the activities comprised listening/observation tasks, cloze exercises, questions, conversation manipulation, and reconstruction exercises through the use of transcripts. In this way students’ attention was explicitly drawn to both aspects of spoken interaction: (1) verbal resources used by participants together with sociocultural norms, register, idioms, politeness and characteristics of spoken grammar (including contractions, ellipsis and prosody), and (2) nonverbal resources such as gaze, kinesics, and proxemics, At any point in the lesson, whenever it was necessary, the CA concepts could be revisited and expanded upon.

3 CA concepts taught to L2 learners

A number of CA concepts were gradually introduced, and specialist terminology was used and modified to suit students’ language level when necessary. The following concepts were taught, some of which are examined in detail in the next sections: social action, affiliation, adjacency pairs, polarity, repair mechanism, turn-taking system, topic manage-ment and sequential organization (opening, centring, pre-closing, closing), sociocultural norms such as greetings (in openings), invitation, apology, and leave-taking (in closing), as well as the role of paralinguistic features, prosody, and response tokens (not necessarily in that order). Based on the observations made in the classroom by the teacher-researcher and on the lessons she recorded, as well as on the students’ pre-instruction conversations, the following concepts were taught for the reasons outlined below.

a Response tokens: Students from Group 1 did not use response tokens in their pre-instruction conversations. As a result, a lesson was devised to make students aware of how feedback is given in the course of an English conversation. These students were then asked to practice conversation with their Australian neighbours or in a service encounter. Below is the transcript of a conversation that took place during the introspective phase. In this conversation a Vietnamese student reported his experience of talking with a native speaker to the teacher/researcher:

Conversation 1 (where S = L2 the student Truc, T = teacher; for the transcription conventions, see Appendix 1):

1. S: I-I practise you know 2. T: yeah 3. S: er there’s one time I speak English with my 4. S: neighbours but they said I understand at all, you 5. S: know. But I, I haven’t er I haven’t er given er 6. S: feedback. They er think I don’t understand at all. 7. T: mm 8. S: you know like that 9. T: yeah but you had understood10. S: yes11. T: hm. yeah, okay. Thank you.




In this conversation the student reported that he had a conversation with his Australian neighbour, during which he had not displayed any response tokens. As a result the native speaker was puzzled and had to check overtly that the Vietnamese student had actually understood what he had said. It turned out that the student had understood per-fectly but had not shown it explicitly. This exercise was designed to raise students’ consciousness about the usefulness of receipt tokens in L1. In the discussion that ensued from this exercise in the cultural-evaluation phase, the teacher-researcher asked the students if they were using receipt tokens in their L1. It turned out that the whole class declared that they indeed used them in their L1, and students showed surprise at their lack of transfer onto L2 in this regard. This activity raised students’ awareness of which interactional resources, i.e. receipt tokens in this case, are employed not only in L2 but also in their L1.

b Assessments: It was found that Group 2 used a variety of response tokens such as ‘yeah’, ‘okay’, ‘mm ‘and ‘oh’. However, in both groups none of the students used assessments in their pre-instruction conversations. Assessments were therefore taught explicitly. Often conversationalists show their empathy or affiliation with each other in various ways by using assessments, response tokens, agreement, etc. Assessments are statements of evaluation (Nofsinger, 1991) such as ‘good’, ‘fantastic’, ‘how ter-rible’, etc. Assessments have an important affiliative role in conversation as they not only indicate the recipient’s continued interest in the conversation but also show how he or she relates to and empathizes with the speaker (Goodwin, 1986; Goodwin & Goodwin, 1992). Next is a pre-instruction conversation from Group 2 that illustrates this point.

Conversation 2 (L2 Learners: Kim is a male Korean and Ha a male Vietnamese):

1. Ha: ehm actually mm I-I have applied er for a (…) university of [technology 2. Kim: [yes, 3. Ha: already. 4. Kim: o:h 5. Ha: last mm er for last half year I was doing my master degree in that 6. Ha: university? and that master degree by research. now I’m waiting some 7. Ha: equipment? that equipment doesn’t come; so so I can’t do nothing now 8. Ha: so I go back to TAFE to [take English; 9. Kim: [mm, mmhm,10. Ha: because at first I arrive at Australia I did ten weeks English in (…)11. Kim: yeah,12. Ha: so I go back to do more;13. Kim: mmhm;14. Ha: but next year I go back to uni [I continue to do my master15. Kim: [mmhm,16. Kim: mm,17. Ha: next. ((end of conversation))

In this conversation, Kim uses a few different response tokens (see Gardner, 2001) such as ‘yes’ (line 2), ‘mm ‘(lines 9 and 16), ‘yeah ‘(line 11), ‘mmhm’ (lines 9 & 13), which



Barraja-Rohan 13

are all continuers with the exception of ‘oh’ (line 4). However, there is no overt display of affiliation after lines 5–8 when Ha explains that he had some problems getting the equipment he needed to continue his master’s degree. This resulted in a difficult situation for him as he did not have any other option but to interrupt his master’s degree and instead attend English classes, which obviously represented a step down for him. At line 9 Kim does not show any empathy to Ha’s plight; he does not produce any utterance of sympathy and instead he only uses continuers. For instance, he could have uttered ‘that’s a shame’ to show empathy and, at line 15, he could have produced a positive assessment like ‘that’s good’ in response to Ha’s plan to return to his master’s as being the desired outcome. The lack of affiliation may not constitute an overt problem in this interaction, but this conversation is an illustration of a phenomenon found repeatedly in other learner–learner interactions (also see Ohta, 1999). When students’ attention was drawn to the concept of affiliation displayed through the deployment of assessments, they indi-cated their ignorance of such an interactional resource in L2.

c Adjacency pairs and sociocultural norms of interaction: Students struggled with socio-cultural norms such as greetings and conversation closings, which are usually taken for granted. This is also related to the notion of adjacency pairs where students could not identify the link between a first and second greeting uttered by different speakers, e.g. reciprocating ‘Hi’. A cloze exercise was set up to focus on the concept of adjacency pair in greetings (as well as the Australian English sociocultural norm of greeting with ‘G’day’).12 The following excerpt is taken from an audio-taped conversation created for the lower intermediate group, to which students had to listen several times before com-pleting the cloze activity (for a summary of the whole lesson, see Appendix 2):

Conversation 3 (native speakers):

1. Paul: hi Jan how are you↓ 2. Jan: g’day Paul↓ I’m good↑ 3. Jan: gee it was cold this morning though, wasn’t it↓ 4. Jan: it was really hard getting out of bed↓ 5. Paul: it certainly was↓ I really didn’t want to get out of bed and to 6. Paul: work↓ 7. Jan: no: still it is Friday↓ 8. Paul: I know isn’t it great↑ 9. Jan: [yeah↓10. Paul: [and it’s supposed to be good on the weekend↑ the weather↑11. Jan: yeah↑ barbeque weather↑ thirty degrees_12. Paul: fantastic13. Jan: yeah, great↓

Cloze activity: Listen to the conversation again then fill in the spaces with the words you hear:

yeah no how are you g’daycold hi weather really (…)




To illustrate the point about the importance of teaching the concept of an adjacency pair, we shall only focus on the opening.

1. Paul: _________ Jan _________2. Jan: _________ Paul↓ I’m good↑

In this exercise, a number of students, particularly from Group 1, did not put the sec-ond pair part to the first greeting ‘G’day’ in line 2 but instead had written ‘Yeah’ or ‘Good’.13 The cloze activity was another way of checking students’ understanding of an appropriate social action. The concept of adjacency pairs is very useful in that it explains that some utterances are interdependent; so, when one participant utters the first part of a pair it is expected that the co-participant will respond contiguously with the second pair part, befitting the prior utterance, like a greeting followed by another greeting, question followed by answer, etc. Within this concept, the absence of the second pair part is noticeable. This is what Kramsch (1986) referred to as the intention of the message. Sociocultural norms of interaction are often reflected in adjacency pairs such as greetings, invitations, leave-taking, openings (as in telephone conversa-tions), complimenting, etc.

d Evaluation: The methodology was assessed by examining students’ conversations and their participation. Students’ responses to tasks and feedback were taken into consid-eration, as was their performance in conducting the conversations recorded at the start and end of the conversation course. In addition, students’ comments resulting from an evaluation questionnaire undertaken at the end of the course were collected. However, we need to point out that because students engaged in undirected conversations whereby they chose their own partners, it is therefore not possible to show the same pair of stu-dents interacting in the pre- and post-instruction conversations. Furthermore, this prob-lem is compounded by the fact that in Group 2 students were free to attend, and some did not come regularly or, indeed, stopped attending. Therefore, conversations 3 and 4 focus-ing on Truc (male Vietnamese) and Kim (male South Korean) shown in the section below do not include the same co-conversationalists as in the previous conversations 1 and 2.

4 Outcomes, students’ evaluations and post-instruction conversations

Judging from students’ responses to tasks, the results were very encouraging. There was a high level of participation and interest, they made very positive comments in both groups, and positive discussions took place between the teacher-researcher and students. Students’ performance improved throughout the course, which was particularly noticea-ble in the post-instruction conversations. Positive changes occurred in many areas, as illustrated by the two post-instruction conversations analysed below and their responses to the questionnaire.

a Students’ evaluations: Students were able to make comments in the end-of-course evaluation questionnaire. For reason of space only some of the students’ comments are



Barraja-Rohan 15

reproduced below. The following comments indicate that the students understood the concepts taught; the comments also illustrate students’ perception of their own learning, improvement in their listening and/or speaking skills, and increased confidence in speaking:

I got more structures for making sentences, feedback, assessment, question tag … [sic]

Lot is helpful to find what is different between them [Australian native speakers], when I found differences it is easier to understand English conversation. [sic]

I realized the differences between the theory and practical conversation. So I become interested in the practical conversation.

I learn how conversation is going. [sic]

Easier to understand because I look familiar with English. [sic]

More speaking and understanding in listen native speakers. [sic]

Because I think I can talk with everybody perfectly. [sic]

The practice of conversation has helped me, I have improved. [sic]

Conversation in English is very useful, it helped me easier understand, more confident, more polite, better in speaking. [sic]

Before we study conversation, we can’t speak English very well. Now I think we can speak English smoothly. [sic]

It’s help me practice when speak and I don’t be shy. [sic]

I feel confident with my speaking when I use it. [sic]

I could understand and I’m not shy when I am speaking. [sic]

The next comments indicate that the CA methodology helped students to apply the concepts in their interactions with other learners and native speakers, which facilitated their interactions as they also benefited from practicing these concepts by conversing in class. Therefore what is significant is that they were able to transfer the concepts outside the classroom, which is obviously the desirable outcome, yet it is often difficult to verify and achieve:

The conversation is very interesting when I speak to classmates and Australians they are easier to understand. [sic]

Conversation helped. I have learned what kind of answer or words to use in a conversation.




Most grammar and theory that I had learned during the class was what I had already known. But I didn’t accustomed to adopting them in real (practical) conversation. But after studying I become better. [sic]

I can know how to keep conversation going when I speak to native speakers. [sic]

b Post-instruction conversations: The next conversation, which focuses on Truc, is taken from Group 1, and it took place at the end of the course, i.e. post-instruction. Note that Truc is interacting with another student from his group. Students were free to choose their own topic but were reminded of the structure of conversation. This conversation illustrates the concepts taught in the conversation course: greeting with appropriate soci-ocultural norms, adjacency pairs, topic management, affiliation, use of assessment, pre-closing sequence, and leave-taking.

Conversation 3 (Group 1: Truc and Hung, both Vietnamese males):

1. Truc: hello Hung. how are you today.= 2. Hung: =good thanks. 3. Truc: are you are er you going back er the next course? 4. Hung: yes of course. 5. Truc: what did you plan to do on the holiday. 6. Hung: o::h, my holiday? em I-I will looking er for a job_ if I 7. Hung: don’t get a job I come back this school; 8. Truc: oh yes that good. 9. Hung: how about you?10. Truc: mm I:: stay home, listen the music an I review my lesson.11. Hung: oh:: I’m sorry, I-I’m busy I must go now.12. Truc: okay.13. Hung: s[ee you], bye bye.14. Truc: [see you.]

As a reminder, Truc had not given any feedback in conversation 1, which took place early in the conversation course. In this conversation he starts with an opening by using a greeting, which incidentally is not reciprocated in line 2. However, the second part of the greeting, the pseudo health inquiry ‘How are you?’ receives a second pair part with ‘Good thanks’. Then, once the greeting is over, in the next turn at line 3 Truc introduces a topic, which was relevant as it was the end of the year and the course. Note that he introduces the topic by using a question, and then the topic moves on to the holidays at line 5, which turns out not to be so for Hung who in the event of not getting a job will attend more English classes (line 7). It is interesting to note that at line 8 Truc is able to produce an assessment (‘Oh yes that good’), which is appropriate because going back to learning more English is deemed a positive outcome. This is indeed a vast improvement from not using response tokens at all, as mentioned before, since assessments are more complex to produce than continuers or other types of response tokens (see Ohta, 2001). At line 9, Hung keeps the conversation going by asking Truc about his plans. Then at line 11, Hung starts to move into closing by launching into a pre-closing sequence ‘Oh I’m



Barraja-Rohan 17

sorry, I-I’m busy I must go now’; then, in the following turn (line 12), Truc responds appropriately by using ‘Okay’ with a falling intonation and moving into closing. Again this is a response token that Truc did not use at the start of the conversation course, nor did Group 2 students in their pre-instruction conversations. Then, at line 13, Hung initi-ates leave-taking, which is reciprocated by Truc in the next turn at line 14 and which ends the conversation. Given what the students accomplished in the conversation, this conver-sation certainly shows a reasonable level of interactional sophistication, particularly for lower intermediate students.

The next post-instruction conversation taken from Group 2 (intermediate), which focuses on Kim, was also used as an evaluation. A summary of the structure of conversa-tion and features studied in class was shown to students before they engaged in their conversation as a reminder of how a conversation was conducted in English.

This conversation is an illustration of the features learnt by Group 2 students: dif-ferent openings to greetings, topic management (introducing topic, topic shift and ending topic), invitation with a pre-sequence, preference organization, display of affiliation, use of assessments, co-construction, turn-taking strategies by using over-laps, repair to clear any misunderstanding or mishearing, moving into pre-closing and leave-taking.

Conversation 4 (Group 2: Kim and Nina, a Thai female, who was a regular attender):

1. Kim: hi Nina how was weekend. 2. Nina: well ver-very good. on Friday yeah, on Friday ehm I went 3. Nina: to my friend’s party? 4. Kim: friend’s party [oh interesting. 5. Nina: [ehm it’s like er (pause) meet together just 6. Nina: old friend an new friend you have all your friend an then? 7. Kim: yeah, 8. Nina: on Friday night we went to Karaoke. 9. Kim: karaoke,10. Nina: yeah; [we went there to- ehm what [ti:me, let me think. oh11. Kim: [↑a:::h. [mm.12. Nina: Hollywood [karaoke yeah13. Kim: [a::h go in the city14. Nina: an in the city [but I’m not sure which street yeah I15. Kim: [in the city;16. Nina: forget it; but we-we went at night but I don’t really17. Nina: remember about that we went by our friend car;18. Kim: ↑ya::h.19. Nina: very nice but ↑yunno, I think ehm I saw but- I-I think20. Nina: thet myself was horrible;21. Kim: no I don’t believe it. [there you see (when where) I think22. Nina: [yeah (……) yeah23. Nina: an what about your weekend.24. Kim: ah me:,25. Nina: yeah,26. Kim: ah I only went to the church.




27. Nina: mmhm,28. Kim: because the one day concert was in the church so I want to29. Kim: join the er the one day concert,30. Nina: what are you doing there;31. Kim: a:h me- they er help with one day concert;32. Nina: yeah,33. Kim: but all the audience is older people just one young [people is me34. Nina: [boring;35. Kim: so the audience is very (.) boring huh huh bu[t er the concert=36. Nina: [o::h o::h37. Kim: = is very good [so I enjoyed the concert. so I want to go.38. Nina: [yeah, (…) like that39. Nina: oh yeah; ehm next week?40. Kim: yeah,41. Nina: er yunno we have plan to go to karaoke;42. Kim: karaoke next week er?43. Nina: yeah we plan after-after class?44. Kim: after this class,45. Nina: yeah we plan to go karaoke46. Kim: yeah,47. Nina: would you like to join us,48. Kim: ↑m::m.49. Nina: if you can-you should I think you can learn singsongs_50. Kim: yeah;51. Nina: yeah.52. Nina: I love you to hear in my (……)53. Kim: huh huh huh yeah on (.) Wednesday,54. Nina: yea[:h;55. Kim: [after Wednesday;56. Nina: Wednesday;57. Kim: after (…)58. Nina: after (…) around nine or ten o’clock=59. Kim: =how many people join you there. er60. Nina: around er ((pause)) ↑fifteen;61. Kim: fifteen?62. Nina: yeah; fifteen people in our class an maybe another person from63. Nina: outside.64. Kim: outside-65. Nina: yeah,66. Kim: yeah; it’s very good.67. Nina: oh_ I have to go now; [sorry (………) so68. Kim: [oh yeah;69. Nina: see you on the Wednesday;70. Kim: next Wednesday;71. Nina: yeah;72. Kim: yeh;73. Nina: ehm74. Kim: on-



Barraja-Rohan 19

75. Nina: so okay see you.76. Kim: see you; yeah; bye.77. Nina: bye.78. Kim: ↑by:e.

The above conversation was videoed in class but not in front of the other students. While Kim and Nina had their conversation in one corner of the classroom, the rest of the class was engaged in another activity away from Kim and Nina so that the latter did not have an observing audience, except for the camera. This conversation is considered authentic and not a role-play; it is indeed true that students in this particular class went to a karaoke night as planned in this conversation.

In this interaction, we can see how Kim is more involved than in conversation 3 and is now able to use assessments (lines 4 and 66) appropriately to display affiliation, which he was unable to do in conversation 3. He is able to interject more often, unlike in conversation 3 where his co-participant took long uninterrupted turns. Indeed, Kim produces a variety of utterances to display his engagement and affiliation, whereas his co-participant, Nina, takes shorter turns. For instance, at line 4 he partly echoes Nina’s utterance and adds an assessment ‘friend’s party oh interesting’. At line 13 he offers a candidate place as to where they went for their karaoke ‘a::h go in the city’ which is accepted in the next turn by Nina. Note that Kim does this in an overlap, which is more difficult as he is still attentive to Nina’s talk but is able to simultaneously make contribu-tions. Hence in this conversation there is a display of co-construction, whereas in conver-sation 3 Kim was simply providing continuers.

This conversation starts with an opening, i.e. a quick greeting that is not recipro-cated, as Kim introduces a topic straightaway with a question.14 Nina supplies a second pair part to the question providing an extended response, which is co-constructed with Kim. For instance, when Kim mentions the city at line 13, Nina responds to his utter-ance informing him that she does not know where they went: ‘but I’m not sure which street yeah I forget it; but we-we went at night but I don’t really remember about that we went by our friend car;’ (lines 14, 16–17). At line 19, when Nina makes a self-deprecatory comment Kim produces a preferred response which is to deny it (Pomerantz, 1978). This is again another display of affiliative behavior by Kim, a behavior that he could not display at the start of the conversation class as illustrated by conversation 2. Then, at line 23, Nina engages in a change of speakership as she hands the turn over to Kim with the question ‘an what about your weekend’ (a device also used by Ha in con-versation 3: Group 1).

From lines 26 to 37, Kim engages in a multi-unit turn where Nina collaborates through direct questioning (line 30 ‘what are you doing there’), assessment in overlap (line 34 ‘boring’) with the adjective boring which is then recycled by Kim in the fol-lowing turn at line 35 ‘so the audience is very (.) boring.’ Nina also uses continuers (‘yeah’; lines 32 & 38), and response tokens with elongated vowel at line 36 (‘o::h o::h’), indicating an affiliative response through the prosodic marking after Kim’s mention of the boring audience. Then Nina at line 39 acknowledges Kim’s formulation at line 37 (‘so I want to go’), and then shifts the topic through a pre-sequence (‘ehm next week?’) and introduces arrangements for a karaoke party at line 41. Then at line




47 she invites Kim to join them to the party (‘would you like to join us’) after a co-constructed sequence with Kim explaining about this karaoke party (from lines 39 to 45). Kim’s response is ambiguous at line 48 as ‘↑m::m’15 is not an acceptance but may be prefacing a dispreferred response, and Nina is aware of it so she orients to it as such. At line 49 she tries to convince him to come ‘if you can- you should I think you can learn singsongs’. At line 50 Kim displays an agreement token with ‘yeah’ with a mid-fall intonation, but has not accepted the invitation. He needs more information and starts making inquiries about this karaoke party, concerning the day and time (lines 53 & 57). Nina supplies the information ‘around nine of ten o’clock’ (line 58), but note the repair on ‘Wednesday’ lines 55–56. Then Kim wants to know the number of people invited at line 59 (‘how many people join you there’). At line 66 Kim seems to be encouraged by the information he has received and produces an agreement token fol-lowed by an assessment: ‘yeah; it’s very good.’ This could be taken as an acceptance as Nina moves into pre-closing at line 67, therefore orienting to the closure of that sequence as a finished business. Hence she says at line 69 ‘see you on the Wednesday’, which in the next turn is accepted by Kim who responds in a similar fashion (‘next Wednesday’) at line 70. The pre-closing sequence is a quick reiteration of the arrange-ments made earlier. Then the two interactants move into closing by producing ‘yeah’ with a falling intonation contour (lines 71–72). Finally, Nina at line 75, after uttering a terminal ‘okay’, moves into leave-taking, which is done over four turns. This pre-closing and introduction of arrangements is a typical feature of native speaker talk, as Button (1987) has pointed out.

It is worth noting the complexity of this conversation, which is significantly longer than the one produced in Group 1 and which also reflects the sociocultural norms of Australian English. This conversation is interactionally sophisticated in that a few social actions underpin it, and the interactants are very attentive and responsive to what is going on. Indeed, the interactants are affiliative; they are aligned to each other and co-construct the interaction, and when there is a dispreferred response it is picked up and acted upon resulting in a preferred response. Equally they orient to each other by maintaining intersubjectivity, and when it is broken they take steps to repair the trouble. The closing of the conversation illustrates the high level of sophistication that the students were able to achieve, including all the other actions mentioned previously.

IV Conclusions

The comparison of the two students, Truc and Kim, first interacting in conversations 1 and 2 and then at the end of the course in conversations 3 and 4 illustrates the interac-tional accomplishments achieved by them over the period of 12 weeks of a CA-informed pedagogical approach. When including the responses given at the end of the course eval-uation questionnaire it is apparent that the L2 students who participated in the two groups gained much knowledge about interaction, language and intercultural communication as well as confidence in speaking English, judging from their comments.

Not all aspects of IC were discussed in the particular cases shown above due to lack of space; however, they were nonetheless part of the conversation course as discussed



Barraja-Rohan 21

previously. The focus of the course was clearly on communication and not accuracy, an approach advocated by Kramsch (1986), which reflects what the interactants orient to in naturally occurring conversations. We know from fine-grained conversation analyses of native speaker interactions that the interactants orient to the communicative aspect of the interaction and are found to commit syntactic errors on occasions. Only when intersub-jectivity is threatened do the interactants resort to the repair mechanism to restore it. Hence it is imperative that the L2 learners are shown how to orient to the communicative aspect of the interaction and not only to grammatical accuracy.

As regards to Kasper’s (2006) taxonomy of interactional competencies, the approach discussed in this article deals with each of its aspects, and these were reflected in conver-sations 3 and 4:

• understanding and performing social actions in their sequential context (such as greeting/opening and leave-taking);

• making L2 learners aware of the orderly nature of the turn-taking system (such as the adjacency pair sequential organization);

• designing turns to reflect the social actions students are performing (such as inquiring about their holidays in conversation 3 and inviting in conversation 6);

• using paralinguistics and prosody to achieve particular communicative goals (for instance, using falling intonation on terminal response tokens in pre-closing, as exemplified in conversations 3 and 4);

• repairing any trouble (such as the day in conversation 4);• co-constructing, (such as in conversation 4 when Nina and Kim jointly manage a

long turn-at-talk);• constructing social identities (such as in conversation 3 the identity of a job seeker

and in conversation 4 that of friends socializing and partying); and, lastly• recognizing transitions from various discursive activities (such as moving from

greetings/opening to introducing a topic, closing/changing topics and moving into pre-closing before leave-taking reflected in both conversations 3 and 4).

On a final note, an anecdote is reported16 to illustrate the importance of teaching the concept of preference organization, which enables L2 speakers who are not yet fully competent to interpret the tacit meaning of utterances representing a great source of dif-ficulty. To celebrate the end of the ESL course, teachers and students had organized a get-together in a café. A Thai male student from Group 2 wanted to know whether the teacher-researcher was going to join them, so he asked the following question: ‘Are you going to come with us on Sunday?’ To which the teacher-researcher replied after a brief pause: ‘Well, I’ll try to come.’ The Thai student then retorted that the teacher-researcher was giving a dispreferred response, which was indeed the case. In giving her response, the latter was hoping that the real intent would be disguised in the form of an attempt to come so that the students would not be hurt by a straight rejection of their invitation. This was an embarrassing moment for the teacher-researcher as the real intent of her response had been disclosed, but an empowering one for the Thai student who had been able to access the social import of the teacher-researcher’s utterance.




In sum teaching conversation by applying the findings of conversation analysis proved to be successful for the groups of learners of English who participated in the study since they became more effective conversationalists in acquiring aspects of L2 interactional competence related to mundane conversation. The analyses of the students’ conversations revealed that: (1) there was a need to teach a number of the interactional features and concepts examined by CA, and (2) a number of CA concepts/features had been employed by the students in the present study. It could be argued that these concepts were acquired given the 12-week period between the pre- and post- instruction conversa-tions. CA was found to provide the teacher with a powerful diagnostic tool to identify the causes of interactional problems as well as a theoretical framework and a methodology to teach interactional competence. It is hoped that other studies besides Packett (2005) and Huth and Taleghani-Nikazm (2006) will follow since CA is now recognized for the insights it brings to L2 research and teaching.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Chantal Crozet and Anna Filipi for their useful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this article as well as the two anonymous Language Teaching Research review-ers for their insightful remarks.

Notes

1 Adjacency pairs are linked to the preference organization system because each pair has an alternative response: the preferred or dispreferred response. For instance, a request can be either granted being the preferred response, or rejected being the dispreferred response. These responses do not reflect the speaker’s psychological state (Hutchby & Wooffit, 1998) but social orientation, and each of these responses engenders a different turn shape, which is more involved in the case of the dispreferred response (Pomerantz, 1978).

2 On the topic of using authentic conversations in the second/foreign language classroom, see Roberts and Cooke (2009).

3 Pragmatic competence is described as the ability to understand and produce a communicative action, which implies speech acts, engaging in various discourse-types and speech events as well as being able to attain social goals and relate appropriately in interpersonal situations. This involves the use and comprehension of politeness strategies in an appropriate context (see Kasper & Rose, 2001).

4 For the term ‘conversational syntax’, see Tanaka (1999).5 The notion of competence is not discussed in this article; for an in-depth definition refer to

Young (2008).6 Even though his book (Young, 2008) does not deal with L2 interactional competence it still

has relevance for this discussion.7 For teaching resources see Barraja-Rohan and Pritchard (1997), which is also available

online: http://www.eslandcateaching.wordpress.com/beyond-talk (retrieved July 2011). For ESP (job interviews and medical interactions) see Roberts (2007) and Roberts et al. (2007). To help teachers to use a CA approach, see Wong and Waring (2010).

8 The ISLPR is a proficiency scale designed by Australian researchers Wylie and Ingram (1999); it evaluates the four language skills and has been used in various institutions in place of IELTS or other tests.



Barraja-Rohan 23

9 ISLPR 1 refers to basic transactional proficiency, whereby the speaker can communicate his or her basic needs and factual information in very familiar situations or topics. He or she can maintain a very simple conversation using complete, though very simple, sentences while making many mistakes (Wylie & Ingram, 1999).

10 ISLPR 2 refers to basic social proficiency, which means that the speaker can take part in face-to-face conversations with various speakers and in telephone conversations. He or she is able to describe familiar things, relate familiar events, and convey opinions fairly precisely. He or she can use a range of complex sentences but has still a restricted range of vocabulary, and struggles to express complex issues and abstract concepts. He or she can make mistakes in grammar, particularly when trying to express more complex ideas (Wylie & Ingram, 1999).

11 This reference is a slightly revised version of the original 1997 article and presents a more detailed chart.

12 Note that the Australian greeting expression ‘G’day’ had been explained to the students prior to the cloze exercise.

13 ‘Good’ could be an acceptable answer as the next speaker may be orienting to the second part of the greeting, i.e. the pseudo health enquiry. However in this particular example ‘good’ is not appropriate because in line 2 Jan says, after the blank, ‘Paul, I’m good.’ The main point here was to focus students’ attention on the second pair part of the greeting itself. Besides, the word ‘good’ did not figure in the list of words that the students could choose from.

14 The question about weekends represents a typical sociocultural norm in Australian English when on Mondays people usually talk about their weekend.

15 Hellermann (2009) has noted that a marker displaying a dispreferred response, such as this one, is a rare occurrence in learners from beginning to upper intermediate levels.

16 This anecdote was reported in the teacher-researcher’s field notes immediately after class.

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Appendix 1 Conversation analysis transcription conventions

The conventions used in the transcriptions in relation to intonation contours are adapted by Gardner (1995) and are the following ones:

. full fall; slight fall– level, slight rise¿ medium rise? full rise

The next ones are conventions compiled from Atkinson and Heritage (1984) and Sacks et al (1974):= indicates continuous stretch of talk[ ] indicates simultaneous talkyea:h the colon indicates lengthening of soundnine oclock: the underline indicates sentence stress- the hyphen indicates abrupt cut off or glottal stopºit’s okayº the degree sign indicates talk that is softer than the surrounding talkººspeciesºº the double degree sign indicates unvoiced talk↑ indicates a shift in pitch going up↓ indicates a shift in pitch going down(.) indicates a very short pause or micropause(0.5) indicates the length of the silence in relation to the surrounding talk>anyway< the signs > < indicate talk that is faster than the surrounding talk< anyway the sign < at the beginning indicates talk that starts quickly<maybe> the signs < > indicates talk that is slower than its surrounding talkhuh indicates laughter(h)uh (h) indicates plosive quality$that’s a pity$ the $ sign indicates laughing while talking((clears throat)) the double brackets indicate co-activity relevant to the interaction(.........) indicates talk that is not clearly audible



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Appendix 2 Reproduction of the first lesson taken from the teacher-researcher’s notes:

Introductory lesson

Objectives: Awareness raising activityTo introduce a real life conversation with greetings and small talk ‘Talking about the weather’To introduce the notion of structure of conversationTo introduce the notion of adjacency pairsTo introduce the notion that speakers can overlap each other without impeding com-munication

Material used: Interact Unit 1 (R.C. Pritchard, not published) Conversation on the weather

1. Cloze exercise: Students were handed out the worksheet with the dialogue on the weather. Words such as g’day (Australian idiomatic expression ‘Good day’) and yeah were explained.

2. Students had to fill in the blanks. First, they did it without listening to the tape to give them an idea of what to listen for and to gauge their conversational knowl-edge. Then they had to check their answers by listening to the recorded conversa-tion. I stopped the tape after each missing item. Students listened to the tape in this way four times.

3. I checked students’ answers and realized that some students had written yeah in place of g’day. I used CA to explain their errors. Hence we looked at what hap-pens in a conversation and how it is organized. I introduced the terms opening, centering and closing. Then we looked in detail at what happens at the opening stage. I elicited answers from the students, wrote them on the board and we called this first stage greeting. Then I drew students’ attention to the phenomenon of adjacency pairs and used the terms First Pair Part (FPP) and Second Pair Part (SPP), which I wrote on the board I also briefly looked at the response tokens produced in this conversation such as yeah. Students had no problems under-standing the terminology and concepts.

4. Students corrected their answers themselves. When I checked their answers, I noticed that they had provided plausible answers.

5. Students listened to the tape to verify their answers.6. We discussed the correct responses. I drew students’ attention to three points:

polarity in FPP and SPP (line 7 where Jan says no in agreement with Paul), the topic of this conversation and overlaps in lines 9-10 and 10-11.

7. We had a discussion about whether they would have this conversation about the weather in their L1, and what they would talk about instead to make small talk.



using conversation analysis in the second language

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