33.266, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis: Kunitz, Markee, Sert (2021)

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Subject: 33.266, Review: Applied Linguistics; Discourse Analysis: Kunitz, Markee, Sert (2021)

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Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2022 09:27:35
From: YUNTONG LIU [yuntongliu at tongji.edu.cn]
Subject: Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-1148.html

EDITOR: Silvia  Kunitz
EDITOR: Numa  Markee
EDITOR: Olcay  Sert
TITLE: Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research
SUBTITLE: Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy
SERIES TITLE: Educational Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Springer Nature
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: YUNTONG LIU, YAN WANG

INTRODUCTION

In their introductory paper on research methods, Freebody and Freiberg (2011, p. 82-83) mention that Ethnomethodologists and conversation analysts have conducted extensive and in-depth studies on many topics in the field of education, such as examinations, classroom order and management, classroom teaching activities, and teacher-student relationships. However, according to Gardner (2013, p. 611), it was not until the late 1990s that a large number of studies on classroom interaction using Conversation Analysis (CA) emerged, despite a series of early studies. The book “Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research：Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy” (published by Springer in 2021) brings us new developments in this domain. As the title clearly indicates, it explores conversation analytic research and its influence on all aspects of second language teaching from both theoretical and applied perspectives. 

SUMMARY

The book is divided into five parts, plus an introductory chapter by the three editors followed by a theoretical chapter by Simona Pekarek Doehler. In the introductory chapter, the editors not only briefly explain the characteristics of CA, but also focus on the pedagogical reform path based on CA, emphasizing the importance of integration and communication between theoretical and practical exploration. Doehler’s chapter outlines the development of interactional competence and introduces some of the intellectual background against which the studies in this volume can be understood. The five parts of the book are as follows: Part I: CA Research in L2 Classrooms, Part II: CA Research in Content Based Language Classrooms, Part III: CA Research and Teacher Education, Part IV: CA and Assessment, and Part V: Concluding Remarks. Below we briefly summarize the main content of each part.

Part I “CA Research in L2 Classrooms” contains four papers. Ali Reza Majlesi’s paper “The Intersubjective Objectivity of Learnables” examines how the intersubjective objectivity of learnables is socially constructed during teacher-student interactivities in a Swedish as a second language classroom. Majlesi demonstrates the importance of embodied actions and objects in the immediate physical environment as resources for the social creation of intersubjectively achieved objective learnables in classroom talk, which should be focused on by researchers. Søren W. Eskildsen’s paper “Doing the Daily Routine: Development of L2 absorbed Interactional Resources Through a Recurring Classroom Activity” shares the theme of Majlesi’s paper, which studies how teacher-led daily routines (e.g., roll call, date writing) help learners to participate and improve their interactional competences. Nigel Musk’s paper “‘How Do You Spell That?’: Doing Spelling in Computer-assisted C
 ollaborative Writing”
studies how writers and collaborators correct spelling mistakes when writing on computers. It is found that when writers lack relevant knowledge, collaborators and computer-installed spell checkers can help. But cooperative learning does not help when the collaborator also lacks the knowledge or the software on the computer is faulty. “Instruction-Giving Sequences in Italian as a Foreign Language Classes: Ethnomethodological Conversation Analytic Perspective” by Silvia Kunitz shows how a teacher accomplishes instruction-giving sequences when telling students to read the text they wrote. Due to the participation of multiple groups of students, teacher’s instructions are found to change correspondingly in different rounds.

Part II “CA Research in Content Based Language Classrooms” contains four papers. Natalia Evnitskaya’s paper “Does a Positive Atmosphere Matter? Insights and Pedagogical Implications for Peer Interaction in CLIL Classrooms” examines how students take care of their peers’ facework while working on exercises in groups and the effect of this care on group activities in an elementary school math class in Barcelona (Spain). Leila Kääntä’s paper “Multimodal Perspective into Teachers’ Definitional Practices: Comparing subject-specific Language in Physics and History Lessons” compares definitional practices by two teachers in History and Physics courses, respectively, and the different defining resources are found by comparing teaching videos of different courses, which is helpful for teacher training. Yo-An Lee’s paper “Tracing Teachers’ Ordering Decisions in Classroom Interaction” compares an ESL (English as Second Language) composition course and two EFL (Eng
 lish as a Foreign Language)
content courses. The paper elucidates the processes by which classroom teachers make ordering decisions regarding when and how to discuss particular content knowledge. Tracing and carefully analyzing these sequences helps teachers to better understand and improve classroom teaching. 

Part III “CA Research and Teacher Education” focuses on how to apply the findings of Conversation Analysis to the training of language teachers. Olcay Sert’s paper “Transforming CA Findings into Future L2 Teaching Practices: Challenges and Prospects for Teacher Education” proposes its own solution that we can find extracts of teacher-student interactions in different contexts, make them into videos (using modern mobile devices), and integrate them into teacher training programs to help teachers engage with their own on-going professional development. Hansun Zhang Waring’s paper “Harnessing the Power of Heteroglossia: How to Multi-Task with Teacher Talk” focuses on a common problem faced by language teachers, which is that teachers may need to deal with different tasks at the same time. In the second half of the paper, Waring proposes a five-step application scheme, namely: (1) finding the problem, (2) Using class video, (3) In-depth discussion, (4) Proposing solutions
 , and (5) Video
recording and repetition. The paper “‘What Do You Think About This?’: Differing Role Enactment in Post Observation Conversation” by Younhee Kim and Rita Elaine Silver studies the dialogues between mentors and classroom teachers during classroom video observation. It is found that the different roles of the mentors in this process will have different influences on the communication and guidance activities between them.

Part IV “CA and Assessment” demonstrates the influence of the conversation analytic approach on evaluation, which is an important field of language learning. Three papers are included in this part. “A Micro-analytic Investigation into a Practice of Informal Formative Assessment in L2 Classroom Interaction” by Nilüfer Can Daşkın finds that Reference to a Past Learning Event (RPLE) in class provides a good opportunity to evaluate students’ classroom interactional competences. The paper “Conceptualizing Interactional Learning Targets for the Second Language” by Thorsten Huth proposes that we require additional changes, such as defining learning objectives, reforming measurement methods, and reflecting on overall language instruction programs to improve learners’ Interactional Competence. F. Scott Walters’ paper “Some Considerations Regarding Validation in CA-Informed Oral Testing for the L2 Classroom” focuses on oral testing in the second language classroom. The
  researcher tries to
combine CA with language testing, emphasizing the use of CA’s corpus and research to develop oral assessment methods suitable for second language classrooms.

Part V “Concluding Remarks” contains two chapters. Junko Mori’s paper “Between Researchers and Practitioners: Possibilities and Challenges for Applied Conversation Analysis” not only comments on the papers in the volume, but also focuses on how to bridge the gap between researchers and practitioners. Mori emphasizes in particular that communication is a two-way process. Researchers must have the willingness and ability to listen to practitioners’ concerns and engage them in research. Simona Pekarek Doehler’s paper “L2 Interactional Competence and L2 Education” analyzes the conflict between language learning concepts centered on Interactional Competence and previous language learning concepts, emphasizing the urgency of updating language learning concepts and the importance of communication between researchers and relevant personnel in all aspects of language teaching.

EVALUATION

The papers selected for this volume present recent research using CA in the second language field. The volume covers many related topics, such as teachers’ instruction behaviors, interactions between teachers and students, new examination formats, and teacher education. In terms of classroom teaching, it also includes topics that are familiar to researchers and language teachers, such as instructions issued by teachers, code switching, error correction, and group activities. Through careful analysis with CA, researchers and language teachers can gain a clearer and deeper understanding of relevant phenomena. The video recording and transcriptions of CA have the effect of making familiar phenomena seem unfamiliar, which not only helps researchers and language teachers better understand the changeable process and complexity of classroom activities in language teaching, but also helps to discover new phenomena. For example, Waring’s paper discusses how language teachers often use one
activity to complete multiple tasks in class, a phenomenon that language teachers are familiar with but do not pay special attention to. It is through Waring’s discussion that this has entered the vision of researchers and language teachers and also helps explain some related phenomena. 

Another outstanding feature of this volume is that the editors require each researcher to set aside a special section to discuss the practical value of their research to the practice of teaching. As Mori (p. 408) points out in her concluding chapter, the practical value given by each researcher varies greatly. For example, the papers by Huth and Majlesi only offer the inspiration that related research brings to language teaching or learning, while other researchers such as Kunitz, Kääntä, Sert, and Waring offer very specific application steps and methods. In particular, Sert and Waring put forward a very specific operation scheme on how to use the findings of CA for teacher training. But no matter how inconsistent, this volume reflects an attempt by the editors and authors to combine theoretical research with teaching practice, which is commendable.

The papers selected for this volume cover language teaching or learning in different environments, involving English, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, and other languages. The learners include people of different ages, from elementary school pupils to university students. Contrasting with Nguyen and Malabarba’s “Conversation analytic perspectives on English language learning, teaching and testing in global contexts”, this volume focuses on the field of worldwide research on second language teaching. Therefore, it can be said that this new book demonstrates the latest CA research in the field of second language learning more comprehensively. 

As admitted by the editors, it is only thirty years since CA has been applied in the field of second language teaching. Although some progress has been made, there is still a long way to go before the results of CA applied to second language teaching achieves substantial results. First, although CA has been recognized in the field of applied linguistics to a certain extent, it will still take time to gain wider recognition. In 2018, John Benjamins published “Conversation Analysis and Language Alternation: Capturing Transitions in the Classroom” (edited by Anna Filipi and Numa Markee); in 2019, Multilingual Matters published “Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts” (edited by Hanh thi Nguyen and Taiane Malabarba); in 2019, Springer published “Conversation Analytic Research on Learning-in-Action” (edited by John Hellermann, Søren W. Eskildsen, Simona Pekarek Doehler, and Arja Piirainen-Marsh). The publicatio
 n of these
successive volumes shows that the influence of the conversational analytic approach in the field of second language teaching is expanding. Secondly, CA did not originally pay enough attention to non-verbal behavior, so the transcription and analysis of non-verbal behaviors are still in the exploratory stage. This book highlights the role of non-verbal information, but there are still some shortcomings, such as different researchers adopt different methods to annotate non-verbal information, resulting in inconvenience in reading and comparison. What is more, although the book involves many topics, various languages, and teaching environments, it has certain limitations. Some important topics are not covered, such as cultural learning in the language classroom. At the same time, the types of languages and teaching environments can also be further expanded to increase coverage.

This volume reflects recent efforts of using CA to explore and reform classroom teaching and other aspects in the field of second language teaching, and represents a new attempt to bridge the gap between the research and practice of Conversation Analysis. The design of the volume is also very friendly. Each part begins with a mini-introduction chapter. These mini-introductions and the final chapters provide appropriate comments and summaries on the relevant background and research. The purpose of this volume is to convey the latest research to relevant personnel in the field of second language teaching (language teachers, course designers, university administrators, etc.), and to promote innovation in the field of second language teaching. It will also be read widely by audiences who are interested in Conversation Analysis and its application, especially to second language teaching and learning.

REFERENCES

Filipi, A. & Numa Markee (eds.). 2018. Conversation Analysis and Language Alternation: Capturing Transitions in the Classroom. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Freebody, P. & Jill Maree Freiberg. 2011. Ethnomethodological Research in Education and the Social Sciences: Studying ‘the Business, Identities and Cultures’ of Classrooms. In: L. Markauskaite, et al (eds.). Methodological Choice and Design, Methodos Series 9. DOI 10.1007/978-90-481-8933-5_7. 

Gardner, R. 2013. Conversation Analysis in the Classroom. In: Jack Sidnell and Tanya Sitvers, (eds.) The Handbook of Conversation Analysis. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.

Hellermann, J., et al (eds.). 2019. Conversation analytic research on learning-in-action: The complex ecology of second language interaction ‘in the wild’. Berlin: Springer.

Kunitz, S., Numa Markee, & Olcay Sert (eds.). 2021. Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research：Theoretical and Applied Perspectives on Pedagogy. Cham: Springer.

Nguyen, H. T. & Taiane Malabarba (eds.). 2019. Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Yuntong Liu is Professor of linguistics at Tongji University. He is the author of a Chinese introduction to Conversation Analysis and has published several articles in Applied Linguistics, The Contemporary Rhetoric and Contemporary Linguistics.

Yan Wang took her B.A. of English Major in Shaanxi University of Science and Technology. She is currently a MTCSOL (Master of Teaching Chinese to Speakers of Other Languages) candidate in Tongji University. Her research interests include applied Conversation Analysis and Chinese teaching for children and adults.



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