Joan Kelly Hall

THE ROLE OF AN INTERACTIVE BOOK READING PROGRAM IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF SECOND LANGUAGE PRAGMATIC COMPETENCE

The development of pragmatic competence in another language is significant to second (L2) and foreign language (FL) learners’ ability to communicate successfully in the target language. Although a great deal of research has focused on defining and comparing the content of pragmatic competence across culture groups, far less attention has been given to examining its development. Our study is a partial response to this gap. The purpose of the study was to investigate the connection between Korean childrens participation in an interactive book reading program and their development of pragmatic competence in English. We found that their participation led to significant changes over a 4–month period in the mean number of words, utterances, and talk management features as measured by the changes in childrens use of these during role play sessions. The findings suggest that participation in such reading programs provides opportunities for the development of at least some aspects of L2 pragmatic competence.

The pragmatic role of codeswitching in play contexts

Some of the theory and research on bilingualism and bilingual development have assumed the monolingual user as the norm. Recent development on the notion of multicompetence has questioned the validity of the monolingual norm, suggesting instead that multiple language users are uniquely distinct from monolinguals. In this study we describe one childs(Elena) varied uses of two languages, English and German, as she interacts with her adult caregivers during play. We used two broad questions to guide the study: What kinds of play activity are Elena and her adult interlocutors involved in? How does Elena use her two languages to constitute her involvement in play? The findings revealed that Elena took part in three different play activities(shared-role; adult as leader; and child as leader) which provided her opportunities to use different language functions to realize similar kinds of play. There were subtle differences in her language use during play in both English and German play events, which suggest that through her interactions with different interlocutors in play she was learning and rehearsing different communicative skills in both languages. The findings suggest that involvement in play activities with adult caregivers can result in the development of pragmatically differentiated bilinguals both in terms of code use and language functions.

From L2 interactional competence to L2 interactional repertoires: reconceptualising the objects of L2 learning

Abstract In this paper, I offer a reconsideration of interactional competence as an object of L2 learning. I argue that the field’s uptake of the concept displays a misunderstanding of, or at least a lack of attention to, its related but distinct intellectual roots in linguistic anthropology and conversation analysis. This has resulted in conceptual confusion in studies that draw mainly on conversation analysis to examine L2 learning. I offer interactional repertoires as a more empirically useful concept to capture the objects of L2 learning. Its usefulness is twofold. First, it more aptly captures the variable nature of the multilingual, multimodal resources that learners draw on and develop in their diverse contexts of use. Second, it suggests a more empirically valid understanding of learning, not as a linear, single, one-path-fits-all process, but rather as multidimensional trajectories occurring over L2 learners’ lifespans.

Data collection considerations for classroom interaction research: a conversation analytic perspective

ABSTRACT With the growing centrality of digital recording technologies to conversation analysis (CA) research, an emerging array of publications has begun to provide useful methodological insights on how to capture multimodal and temporal complexities of social interaction in video footages. By and large, however, they have been written as general guidelines, without much regard to specificities of institutional settings. To address this gap, this article discusses specific considerations for the production of audio-visual data for CA research on classroom interaction. We argue that a set of heuristic considerations is needed to prevent researchers from overlooking details that participants orient to as constitutive of their institutional activities. To this end, we offer a brief overview of common characteristics of classroom interaction. These include its multiple spatial arrangements within and across lessons and pedagogical projects which are accomplished through local actions and action sequences. Building on these characteristics, we provide a set of guiding questions to facilitate pre- and online decision-making processes that are undertaken by individual researchers in the data collection phase. Yielding unprecedented opportunities for research, careful and disciplined attention to the production of video data is indispensable as we continue to study and theorise classroom interaction in diverse contexts.

Classroom Talk: Exploring the Sociocultural Structure of Formal ESL Learning

Second and foreign language classroom interaction has attracted much discourse analytic research attention over the last decade or so. Findings from studies of classrooms across age groups, levels, contexts and languages have revealed it to be composed primarily of a specialised teacher-led sequence of three actions: a teacher-initiated known-answer question, a student response to the question, and teacher feedback on the sufficiency of the response (IRF). While many studies have contributed greatly to our understandings of the architectural details of this pattern, they have been less informative about the larger, institutional forces outside of the classroom that help give shape to this pattern. Ho’s book makes a contribution to this topic. The book reports on a study examining the role that the larger schooling context plays in shaping the interaction found in an ESL classroom. It contains seven chapters and an additional section, entitled Final Discussion and Conclusion. The first chapter provides a very brief overview of the study and includes a statement of the research questions. We learn here that, in addition to uncovering the patterns of interaction, Ho is interested in discovering the ‘perceptual sociocultural elements’ (p. 11) underpinning the instruction and their connections to the patterns. Chapter 2 offers a review of the literature on classroom interaction and Chapter 3 presents the methodology used in the study. In Chapter 4 we learn that the site of the study is located in Brunei, a Southeast Asian country, where English serves as one of two national languages. The classroom is in a school where English is taught as a subject at the primary level and gradually takes on a more important role in instruction so that by the upper secondary level, it serves as medium of instruction for more than 90% of the subjects in the upper secondary-level classes. The classroom from which the data are taken is an upper secondary-level class where English is both the medium of instruction and the subject matter. The study’s findings are presented in Chapters 5 and 6, and the book ends with an additional section in which the findings are discussed and a conclusion presented. I found two aspects of the text to be commendable. First, it contributes very useful information on a site of ESL education in a part of the world that is likely unfamiliar to many with interests in second and foreign language classroom interaction. Especially appreciated is the historical background of the country’s educational system and its English language teaching context in particular. Second, in addition to confirming what we know about the ubiquity of the IRF in classrooms, the study suggests links between the perceptions of administrators, teachers and students about language and language learning, and the kinds of instructional practices found in the classroom interaction. It claims, for example, a fairly strong relationship between an institutional view of language as a formal system to be transmitted to learners and the restricted practices of interaction found in the classroom. Ho concludes that effecting change in how language

ACQUIRING INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATIVE COMPETENCE FROM TEXTBOOKS . Lies Sercu . Leuven, Belgium: Leuven University Press, 2000. Pp. 425. 1,100 BF paper.

Recently, classroom-based foreign language learning, particularly as practiced in Europe, has begun moving from a focus on teaching for communicative competence to teaching for intercultural communicative competence. Like communicative competence, intercultural communicative competence includes the knowledge and abilities needed to participate in communicative activities in which the target language is the primary communicative code and in situations where it is the common code for those with different preferred languages. It also includes cognitive and affective skills and behaviors needed to engage in unfamiliar encounters with culturally different interlocutors, to negotiate ones cultural identities in light of ones roles in these encounters, and to understand the norms and assumptions underlying the various communicative activities on ones own terms.