Abstract:

This article analyses how second language teachers and students interactionally negotiate turn-allocation in the classroom. Relying on Conversation Analysis (CA), I analyse how teachers find and select a next speaker (i.e. a student) in what Gourlay (2005) describes as checking episodes, i.e., ‘episodes structured around the outcomes of previously enacted activities, in which teacher and students go through the outcomes of activities in whole-class mode’ (Gourlay 2005: 407). The article describes how this is done on the basis of detailed interactional work between teacher and students. The article thus describes a specific social practice in the second language classroom and the intrinsic relation between the classroom organization and the emerging social practices that are made relevant through the unfolding interaction.

Author: Kristian Mortensen