Doing registering, gearing up, and launching: Understanding student multimodality and the process of class participation

Abstract

This multimodal conversation analytic (MCA) study investigates the embodied process of student self-selection – voluntary participation - in the American graduate classroom. Student participation has frequently been a central topic of investigation in the field of educational linguistics. In American graduate classrooms, in particular, participation is considered significant and students are encouraged to make frequent oral contributions; for instance, so as to ensure that teachers can gauge how much they have learned, and to enhance student learning (e.g., Cohen, 1991; Fassinger, 1995; Rocca, 2010). Building on Kääntä’s (2014) research on students’ “doing embodied noticing” through the process of self-selection for correction initiation in the classroom, the current study analyzed 38 hours of videotaped graduate-level classes and uncovered the three main embodied self-selection stages—doing registering, gearing up, and launching—through which students tend to progress during their preparation for self-selection. It further demonstrates a variation in the form of “expedited processes”—the practices some students use to self-select earlier than others—followed by examples and discussion of how educators can turn these findings into practice and enable a wider range of students to achieve effective self-selection in a classroom.