Recruiting help in word searches in L2 peer interaction: A multimodal conversation-analytic study

•Peer assistance can be recruited by using verbal and embodied resources.•Embodied resources include gaze and gesture.•Verbal resources include metapragmatic search markers, address terms and requests.•Switching into L1 and using L1 equivalents was common in word searches.•Students engaged in taking...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistics and education 2022-02, Vol.67, p.100999, Article 100999
Main Authors: Tůma, František, Sherman, Tamah
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accountability
Address forms
Classroom communication
Classroom interaction
Collaboration
Conversation analysis
English as a foreign language
English as a second language
Hearing disorders
Multimodal conversation analysis
Multimodality
Note taking
Pragmatics
Recruiting help
Word searches
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:•Peer assistance can be recruited by using verbal and embodied resources.•Embodied resources include gaze and gesture.•Verbal resources include metapragmatic search markers, address terms and requests.•Switching into L1 and using L1 equivalents was common in word searches.•Students engaged in taking notes were not heard as accountable for not assisting.•Problems with hearing can account for not assisting in classroom settings. This study investigates how students recruit their peers’ assistance in collaborative word searches during speaking tasks in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Multimodal Conversation Analysis was used on a dataset of recordings from 18 upper-secondary classes to scrutinize how accountability and sanctionability of (not) responding are treated by the participants when a peer's help was not initially available. The analysis showed that there are several resources employed to adjust the participation framework in favor of co-operation when a peer is engaged in another activity, namely gaze, gesture, metapragmatic search markers, address terms and turning the word search into an explicitly formulated request. The co-participant may continue pursuing an institutionally relevant task (e.g., note-taking) or account for the lack of response by claiming hearing problems. These findings shed light on the multiple ways in which assistance in peer interaction can be recruited in classroom settings.
ISSN:0898-5898
1873-1864
DOI:10.1016/j.linged.2021.100999