CLASSROOM TALKS: A CONVERSATION ANALYTIC PERSPECTIVE

Organizer: Numa Markee
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
nppm@uiuc.edu

Saturday, March 22, 2003, 2:00-5:00 PM invited colloquium
Room: Commonwealth South

Colloquium Summary: This colloquium will respecify the currently monolithic conversation analysis (CA) construct of classroom talk as a nexus of related, but observably different, classroom talks; explore whether these various classroom talks provide different qualitative opportunities for SLA; and identify an agenda for future CA-for-SLA-based classroom research.

Interactional competence and foreign language learning: The first few weeks
Gabriele Kasper (University of Hawai’i at Manoa, gkasper@hawaii.edu)
In adult L2 learning, interactional competence serves both a resource that learners draw on to use and learn L2 and as a central learning goal in its own right. This study explores how beginning learners of German as a foreign language accomplish interactional activities with very limited L2 resources and demonstrates how the double role of interaction in L2 learning can be understood through moment-by-moment activity-based analysis.

Classroom talks, discourse identities, and participation structures
Junko Mori (University of Wisconsin-Madison, jmori@facstaff.wisc.edu)
This paper examines the moment-by-moment shift of participation structures and relevance of particular identities evolved in a Japanese language classroom task. It reconsiders the nature of language classroom interaction not as "limited" data vis-à-vis real-world interaction, but as complex practices to which learners are regularly exposed in this institutional site of learning.

Interactional resources for constructing multiple learning activities in Chinese heritage language classrooms
Agnes Weiyun He (SUNY-Stony Brook, ahe@ms.cc.sunysb.edu)
This paper examines how displays of and reactions to certain acts and stances construct multiple yet compatible, blended and blurred cultural and institutional identities in the context of Chinese heritage language schools. It explores the construction of expert-novice relationships in the classroom as well as the construction of learner's language competence

Zones of interactional transition
Numa Markee (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, nppm@uiuc.edu)
This paper uses conversation analysis (CA) to describe the structural properties of zones of interactional transition (ZITs), or talk that occurs at the boundaries of different classroom speech exchange systems. I argue that ZITs are loci of potential trouble, whose explication is of interest to both CA and SLA researchers.

Discussant: Richard Young, University of Wisconsin-Madison