Instructed Vision: Navigating Grammatical Rules by Using Landmarks for Linguistic Structures in Corrective Feedback Sequences

Abstract

AbstractThis study aims to show how multimodality, that is, the mobilization of various communicative resources in social actions (Mondada, 2016), can be used to teach grammar. Drawing on ethnomethodological conversation analysis (Sacks, 1992), the article provides a detailed analysis of 2 corrective feedback sequences in a Swedish‐as‐a‐second‐language classroom. It shows that teaching grammar using corrective feedback sequences is a collaborative activity between teachers and students, which requires both verbal and other embodied practices. Specifically, it demonstrates how the teachers made grammatical constructs visible, noticeable, and thus learnable through the use of multiple resources such as annotating and illustrating on a whiteboard or projection screen, using concrete meta‐talk (Storch, 2008), together with nonverbal actions such as gesturing. The article argues that the practice of marking a linguistic structure through multiple resources creates ‘landmarks’ for teaching purposes. These landmarks were used (a) for an instructed vision through which the intelligibility of abstract grammatical concepts and relations as cognitive phenomena is constituted by a concrete set of observable and reportable actions, and (b) as prompts in organizing knowledge not only for the purpose of the current activity of teaching but also for future occasions.