Topicalization as a practice for facilitating L2 discussion in video-mediated extensive reading book club meetings

Abstract

Conversation analytic work on video-mediated interaction is already well-established, but how teaching is done online remains relatively underresearched. This paper aims to expand our understanding of effective teaching practices in online contexts by examining interactions in an extensive reading (ER) book club implemented via the online videoconferencing tool Zoom at a university in South Korea. The book club met once a week for 10 weeks as an extracurricular program of the university with the goal of creating opportunities for students to read and practice speaking in English as a second language (L2). The study focuses on the book club facilitator's topicalization as a practice for facilitating L2 discussion. By using multimodal conversation analysis, the study shows how the facilitator topicalizes a specific part of a primary speaker's book talk and makes use of that topicalized part of the talk to facilitate discussion. The findings contribute to a growing body of research on L2 teaching in general, and teachers' practices of managing participation in video-mediated teaching contexts specifically. The study also offers pedagogical implications for facilitating L2 discussion online.