Second Language Learning and Language Teaching

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Box 9.3 Classroom interaction, Conversation Analysis and
language teaching
1 In Hatch’s discourse analysis the moves of a conversation revolve around a
topic, for example:
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topic nomination;
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topic identification;
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topic clarification.
2 Conversation Analysis makes use of concepts such as:
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the adjacency pair where two conversational moves are linked;
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repair – how the participants deal with things that go wrong, whether
self-initiated repair or other-initiated repair.
Teaching can use these ideas at two levels:
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the pedagogical exchanges of the classroom;
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the target conversational exchanges that the students are aiming at outside
the classroom.
Discussion topics
1
To what extent can and should the classroom duplicate the language of the
world outside?
2
Should teachers feel guilty if they talk for most of the time in a lesson? Or
would students be disappointed if they did not do so?
3
What kinds of authentic speech can you envisage using in a specific
classroom? How would you use them?
4
Should you simplify your speech while teaching or not?
5
How would you see your teaching in terms of prefigurative, cofigurative and
postfigurative?

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6
Do students need to be taught how to make or request repairs?
7
Is the adjacency pair really crucial to language teaching, or is it just saying
that people take turns to speak, just as tennis players hit the ball alternately?
Further reading
Two books that give a wealth of information on the language teaching classroom
are: Chaudron (1988) Second Language Classrooms: Research on Teaching and
Learning, and Ellis (1990) Instructed Second Language Acquisition. The use of authentic
texts in teaching is described in Little et al. (1988) Authentic Texts in Foreign
Language Teaching: Theory and Practice. A useful book on the role of the first lan-
guage in the classroom is Macaro (1997) Target Language, Collaborative Learning
and Autonomy; an account of dual language programmes can be found in
Montague (1997) ‘Critical components for dual language programs’ in Bilingual
Research Journal 21: 4. A clear introduction to Conversation Analysis can be found
in Seedhouse (2004) The Interactional Architecture of the Language Classroom.
Further reading 169

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