Local Contingencies in L2 Tasks: A Comparison of Context-Sensitive Interactional Achievements across Two Different Task Types

Ufuk Balaman,Olcay Sert

doi:10.5565/rev/jtl3.746

Abstract

Recent research on L2 interaction and interactional competencies shows that L2 learners deploy a great diversity of interactional resources and adapt their talk to context-sensitive differences in various institutional settings. Although there is a growing interest in how these resources vary in different settings, comparative investigations into the interactional mechanisms in different contexts is scarce. With this mind, using Conversation Analysis, this study sets out to provide a snapshot of how a focal L2 learner manifests an observable diversity in task openings of a face-to-face discussion task and an online emergent information gap task. We focus on the first encounters with these two task types and settings and describe participant orientations to context-sensitive conduct on a turn-by-turn basis. The findings demonstrate differences in turn taking, allocation and design as well as in action formation, thus contributing to L2 interactional competence research based on comparative analyses of two single cases.

Highlights

L2 users adapt to such local contingencies that result from different task types
Following the analyses of the extracts showcasing the focal participants’ first encounters with both tasks, we conclude the paper with a discussion on the potential contributions of a comparative investigation into L2 task-oriented interaction. We argue that this kind of inquiry will inform our understanding of L2 interactional competence based on observable learner achievements in situ
Researchers can look into and compare, for instance, classroom interactions and language in the wild, or similar to what we did in the present study, they can compare a focal participants’ interactional competencies in different tasks

Summary

Introduction

Conversation analytic research on L2 interactions has increasingly diversified its contextual and institutional base, with more research on different L2s (e.g. Kunitz & Markee, 2018 for Italian as L2; Çimenli & Sert, 2017 for Turkish as L2), different types of classrooms (e.g. Käänta & Kasper, 2017 for CLIL; Duran, 2017 for EMI), and a range of non-instructional environments (e.g. Eskildsen & Theodorsdottir, 2017 for language learning in the wild) that include mobile augmented reality activities (Hellermann, Thorne & Fodor, 2017) and online L2 tasks (Balaman & Sert 2017a,b; Sert & Balaman, 2017). Research that tracks individual L2 users’ interactional achievements across different task types is scarce, and such line of research, we believe, is promising so as to understand (1) the adaptation of L2 users’ linguistic repertoires to different contexts and (2) task-talk contingent affordances for language learning. (interactional) difficulty (Pallotti, 2017) may play a major role in task accomplishment, tracking the same learner across two tasks in two distant times would prove useful in understanding the adaptation of interactional resources, as well as competencies. Against this background, we track one L2 (i.e. English) user across two task-oriented interactional contexts. We compare face-to-face discussion tasks with online emergent information gap tasks that seem to be two different, if not distant, task types

Literature Review

Method

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Discussion and Conclusion