Resolving disagreements: a conversation analytic study on disagreements in completion sequences among EFL learners

Abstract

ABSTRACT Anticipatory completions can be a potential place in which the second speaker expresses disagreement with the first speaker. ‘Doing disagreement’ is a significant feature of group work interaction, and resolving such disagreements can pose an interactional challenge for students in classroom contexts (Sharma 2012). Examining disagreement episodes can help teachers and students to understand the practices that participants employ to maintain their stances, contest their interlocutors’ standpoints, and close disagreements. This study sets out to discover the interactional patterns advanced EFL participants use in disagreement episodes in post-completion sequences that do and do not bring disagreements to a close. We draw on Conversation Analysis to describe 50 hours of interactions, a total of 20 video-recorded English discussion task sessions collected over 10 weeks from 15 Farsi-speaking advanced EFL students assigned to work in groups of three. The results show that acts to close the disagreement sequence include: relinquishing a position by accepting the position maintained by another, or acknowledging the repair performed by another party. Disagreements are not resolved when the partners fail to accept the possibility of two or more positions or when the less knowledgeable speaker is oriented to disagreement. We conclude with implications for pedagogic practice.