Introduction

[Reuben Woolley]

My name's Reuben Woolley. I recently finished my MSc in Teaching English
(as a foreign language) at Aston University, UK. My dissertation was on
the syntactic analysis of nominal groups in medical English, comparing
X-bar Theory and Systemic Functional Grammar - the latter won!

I'm now starting on my PhD (European) at the universities of Aston, UK
and Zaragoza, Spain. I'm looking at the use of L1 conversational
strategies in L2 as possible markers of the existence of 'ordinary'
conversation in the L2 classroom, a phenomenon which most authors
(Allright, van Lier, etc.) consider to be rare, lacking or impossible.
The data I have so far have convinced me that it is possible (especially
with Spanish students. I'm using standard conversation analysis and I'm
particularly interested in crosscultural pragmatic failure, error repair
and politeness (i.e. which errors may be repaired in ongoing
conversation without causing FTAs that would bring the conversation to a
halt, and which would be necessary to leave until the conversation is
over (perhaps in a later class). I'm also very interested in High
Involvement. This is typical of Spanish informal (and not so informal)
conversation. This is of particular interest in EFL as English (at least
the standard English normally taught) is somewhere near the opposite
extreme of the continuum.

I've just read Douglas Demo's introduction. It looks as if we have
interests in common. perhaps we could go into more detail.

Wishing the list a very healthy future,

Reuben Woolley
c/ Almagro, 5, Entlo. Dcha.
50004 Zaragoza, Spain
Tel./Fax: 34 976 222739
E-mail: r.woolley at zaz.servicom.es