Recruiting help in word searches in L2 peer interaction: A multimodal conversation-analytic study

Abstract

This study investigates how students recruit their peers’ assistance in collaborative word searches during speaking tasks in English as a foreign language (EFL) classes. Multimodal Conversation Analysis was used on a dataset of recordings from 18 upper-secondary classes to scrutinize how accountability and sanctionability of (not) responding are treated by the participants when a peer's help was not initially available. The analysis showed that there are several resources employed to adjust the participation framework in favor of co-operation when a peer is engaged in another activity, namely gaze, gesture, metapragmatic search markers, address terms and turning the word search into an explicitly formulated request. The co-participant may continue pursuing an institutionally relevant task (e.g., note-taking) or account for the lack of response by claiming hearing problems. These findings shed light on the multiple ways in which assistance in peer interaction can be recruited in classroom settings.