This article explores language learning as the speakers' microlongitudinal project in interaction. Using conversation analysis (CA) as a method, we present a single-case analysis on how a change occurs in the linguistic repertoire of 2 learners of Finnish. We discuss the challenges that the temporal aspect in learning poses within CA, such as the…

This study employs conversation analysis to examine a facilitator's interactional practices in the post-expansion phase of students' presentations in the context of a book club for second language learning. The analysis shows how the facilitator establishes intersubjectivity with regard to the ongoing task and manages students' task performance.…

Drawing on usage-based approaches to the study of language learning--including recent research on mobility in interaction, embodied approaches to cognition and communicative action, and innovations in place-based language learning in the wild--this article uses methods from ethnomethodological conversation analysis to investigate video recordings…

Positive relationships with teachers are important for students' second language motivation. However, little is known about how interpersonal interactions stimulate motivated behavior. Drawing on studies of teacher-student relationships, theories from positive psychology, and the psychology of unconscious self-regulation, this case study examines…

This article takes the view that grammar is driven by user choices and is therefore complex and dynamic. This has implications for the teaching of grammar in language teacher education and how teachers' cognitions about grammar, and hence their own grammar teaching, might change. In this small, interpretative study, the participants--students on…

Researchers in second language socialization (SLS) often examine those interactions relating to a learner's integration within a target community. Kramsch and Whiteside (2008) noted the importance of "symbolic competence" in this integration. Symbolic competence, defined as the ability to access contextually relevant social and political…

This study investigates contextual features surrounding the use of a first language (L1) in a Japanese university English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) course during peer interaction in the extended preparation phase leading up to two oral presentation tasks (OP1 and OP3), performed seven months apart. Interaction data were analysed in terms of the…

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the mediational function of the gesture-speech interface in the instructional conversation that emerged as teachers attempted to explain the meaning of English words to their students in two EFL classrooms in the Ukraine. Its analytical framework is provided by Vygotsky's sociocultural psychology…

Comments on an article by James W. Ney, entitled "Contradictions in Theoretical Approaches to the Teaching of Foreign Languages," in the "Modern Language Journal," v58 n4 Apr 1974. (RL)

Argues that not only is the study of interaction in second language acquisition (SLA) predicated on a socially impoverished view of interaction, but also that the types of data frequently used for investigating questions of interaction in a second language may not be adequate for determining what really occurs in such interactions. (15 references)…

Argues that Firth and Wagner are justified in arguing that a broader, context-sensitive, participant-sensitive, generally sociolinguistic orientation might prove beneficial for second language acquisition research. Demonstrates a skepticism as to whether greater insights into second language learning will necessarily influence the process. (13…

Discusses conditions and methods that result in receptivity to learning and advocates their incorporation in language teaching. (RM)

Focuses on two primary meanings of the term interaction in the second-language (L2) context: face-to-face interaction in which two or more people create meaning, and the creative interaction between the reader and the text. Argues that many claims related to the value of L2 spoken interaction can apply equally well to L2 reading. (94 references)…

Centers on computer-mediated communication in a second language (L2). Introduces a conceptual framework for understanding the role of computer-mediated interaction based on a sociocultural analysis of the relationship among text, talk, and learning. Then analyzes current research according to five features particular to online interaction. (90…