Learning as Changing Participation: Discourse Roles in ESL Writing Conferences

Abstract

This study investigates the acquisition of an unfamiliar discursive practice by an adult Vietnamese learner of English. The practice is revision talk in weekly English as a Second Language (ESL) writing conferences between the student and his ESL writing instructor. This research adopts the interactional competence framework for understanding the interactional architecture and participation framework of the practice. It also draws on the theory of situated learning or legitimate peripheral participation in arguing that changes in the student's and instructor's patterns of co‐participation demonstrate processes by which the student moved from peripheral to fuller participation. It appears that although the student was the one whose participation was most dramatically transformed, the instructor was a co‐learner, and her participation changed in ways that complemented the student's learning. Through close analysis of the revision talk in four successive writing conferences, this study contributes to our understanding of language learning as co‐constructed development in situated discursive practices.