ABSTRACT This article examines the interactional accomplishment of interlinguistic mediation by a plurilingual teenager interacting with peers and adults. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, the study elucidates how mediation emerges and is managed within forward-oriented and backward-oriented repair sequences. Specifically, we ask (1) why, when, how and by whom linguistic mediation is initiated; (2) what interactional moves and resources are mobilised in accomplishing mediation; (3) what the implications of mediation activity are for the ongoing interaction. Mediation in forward-oriented repair is characterised by pre-emptive delegation, where the mediated party recruits the mediator to assist incipient production troubles, allowing the speaker to maintain agency through collaborative co-construction. Mediation in backward-oriented repair shares some features of the former but involves reactive intervention, where the mediator actively monitors the interaction, self-selects to resolve troubles in prior talk and often assumes agency to proxy voices through third-person accounts and redistribute epistemic rights. The multimodal analysis shows how participants mobilise a wide range of linguistic, embodied and relational/epistemic resources to accomplish mediational work and how linguistic mediation (re)configures participation frameworks. This study contributes an empirical and multimodal understanding of the CEFR/CV mediation construct and advocates for recognising it as an observable phenomenon rooted in naturalistic interactions.

ABSTRACT There is ample research on ‘disagreement’ in conversation analysis (CA) in diverse contexts and cultures. However, the literature on sources of disagreement is scarce. Moreover, little is known about how it is enacted in academic classroom discourse. This CA study examines participants’ orientations and interactional practices underlying disagreement in the context of academic discussions in the classroom. Drawing on the analysis of twelve multiparty academic discussions by students of social sciences, this paper argues that the assertion of a disagreement is primarily an epistemic act. The initial assertion functions to establish the speaker’s epistemic position on a specific issue, and the first disagreement is designed to display greater epistemic authority relative to that position. This kind of epistemic authority is particularly evidenced through emphatic prosody in the first disagreements in our data. Overall, we found that disagreement is not only a reflection of the differences in opinions but about how deliberation of epistemic authority is managed and maintained in conversation.

ABSTRACT Drawing on approximately 13 hours of video-recorded interactions among second language (L2) Chinese speakers participating in conversation tables in China, this study investigates how participants construct identities regarding language expertise during word search sequences. Adopting a conversation analytic perspective on language learning and identity construction, the study focuses on how identity alignment and misalignment are interactionally constructed and how these configurations contribute to or limit opportunities for language learning. The analysis shows that learning opportunities are most likely to arise when participants achieve identity alignment within the novice-expert membership categories. Furthermore, the type of word search initiation plays a crucial role in shaping participants’ orientations to identity construction and determining the pattern of alignment or misalignment. While identity alignment often facilitates learning opportunities, one case demonstrates that inaccurate lexical provision may undermine these opportunities, highlighting potential limitations of L2-L2 conversation tables. The study concludes with recommendations for enhancing the effectiveness of L2 conversation tables as informal contexts for language learning. By linking identity work with learning opportunities, this study contributes to a deeper understanding of the interactional dynamics of underexamined informal L2-L2 conversation-for-learning settings.

ABSTRACT Language education institutions world-wide regularly use Oral Placement Tests (OPTs) to diagnose test-takers’ second language (L2) accuracy and fluency to place them in the most appropriate class. Despite their widespread use, there are very few studies into the ways OPTs unfold. This study draws on a corpus of 26 video-recorded OPTs at a language institution in the UK. In these OPTs, examiners are given test sheets that contain various topics that they use to initiate a series of question-answer sequences that are followed by the examiner creating a written record of the test-taker’s answer. Successfully achieving these sequences requires the examiner to carefully design their turns to meet with the abilities of each test-taker. We contend that designing turns that are appropriate for multiple test-takers of varying levels during first encounters is a considerable professional challenge facing examiners. By examining interactions stemming from the same test-sheet topic (i.e. job/study) across multiple OPTs using multimodal conversation analysis, this study reveals the ways examiners achieve mutual understanding and ultimately accomplish the institutional goal of completing part of the test-sheet. This contributes to explorations of L2 Interactional Competence in an under-researched testing setting.

ABSTRACT Research on grammar pedagogy has shed much light on the effectiveness of different types of instruction (e.g. explicit vs. implicit, focus on form vs. focus on forms, etc.), but how grammar is explained in the moment-to-moment details of interaction remains under-researched. Using conversation analysis, this study provides a sequential account of unplanned grammar explanations from a high intermediate English as a Second Language course that was conducted entirely over Zoom for adults in a community-based programme. In doing so, eight practices for navigating the opening, core, and closing of grammar explanations are detailed in the relatively under-researched online pedagogical interaction context. Openings involved halting progressivity, isolating prior talk, and querying grammaticality, cores involved answering the query, invoking a rule, and tying back, and closings involved providing an upshot and claiming understanding. These findings contribute to the growing body of conversation analytic literature on explanations of grammar and illustrate practices that teachers can adopt and adapt to engage with talk about grammar.

ABSTRACT This study explores the influence of classroom positioning practices on learner participation and their access to learning opportunities in an English as a Foreign Language (EFL) setting. Drawing on positioning theory and adopting a qualitative case study design with a discourse analytic approach, the study focuses on two Iranian EFL learners in a communicative classroom context. Data were collected via video recordings, field notes, and observational charts over two 90-minute sessions and were analysed using a six-step thematic analysis approach. The results showed learners’ positioning as well as interactive positioning by the teacher and peers significantly influenced participation patterns. Positive positioning boosted learner participation and inclusion, whereas negative or silencing actions such as interruption by a peer or public criticism discouraged participation by constraining learning access. The study suggests teachers’ necessity to monitor students’ as well as one’s own positioning actions to ensure participatory experience on an equal basis. The findings showed the value of micro-level analysis of talk for capturing social dynamics in EFL classrooms.

ABSTRACT This exploratory study examines how content and language teachers conceptualise the cognitive discourse function (CDF) define, and presents the scaffolding strategies they propose to overcome potential challenges encountered by students in classroom interactions. To this end, we analysed a science teacher’s classroom interactions and a collective reflection involving 14 teachers from different disciplines and 2 researchers. The analysis showed that teachers tended to prioritise and justify working on the complete form of the definition. Teachers also identified both conceptual and linguistic challenges that students face when trying to produce definitions. The use of videotaped practice facilitated the teachers’ reflection and the formulation of scaffolding strategies to enhance students’ definitions, including multimodality, the use of closed-ended questions, the provision of clarifications and examples, and conceptual and linguistic modelling. This study contributes to the accessibility of the CDF construct from the teacher’s perspective, which could facilitate both the design and the implementation of classroom interventions. Furthermore, the process used in the study highlights the value of reflective teacher training in developing collaboration between teachers in different disciplines and researchers.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how oral storytelling in history classrooms can foster historical understanding by engaging students both emotionally and analytically. Drawing on classroom observations and linguistic analysis of an experienced eighth-grade teacher’s narration of 16th-century European colonisation, the research identifies three storytelling types: insider-first, outsider-first, and narrative oscillation. These types reflect distinct shifts between immersive and analytical perspectives. Using systemic functional linguistics and process drama theory, the study demonstrates how narrative structures can evoke empathy, scaffold reasoning, and support disciplinary engagement. Findings suggest that insider-first storytelling promotes emotional connection and identification, outsider-first storytelling enhances conceptual clarity, and narrative oscillation enables integration of individual experience with broader historical analysis. The study concludes by advocating for storytelling as a deliberate pedagogical strategy and calls for further research into its reception and impact on students’ historical understanding.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how a group of three fifth-grade students – one autistic and two non-autistic – collaboratively create a fictional story through proposals and joint decisions. The video-recorded data were collected during L1 lessons (total of 3.5 hours). The students first developed a story using a mind map, followed by collaborative writing in a shared online document. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study examines the design features and distribution of students’ procedural and content proposals and the subsequent decision-making, with particular attention to content proposals that require greater interactional work to achieve joint decisions. The findings show that proposals often consisted solely of nominal elements. Additionally, procedural proposals were generally straightforward and readily accepted, whereas content proposals often prompted extended negotiation through supplements, counterproposals, or rejections. These disalignments were occasionally rooted in differing orientations. For example, the autistic student occasionally appeared to prioritise unconventional story elements, whereas the non-autistic students tended to favour more socially normative storytelling. Despite these differences, the group generally reached joint decisions. This study highlights collaborative storytelling as a valuable context for practicing storytelling skills, initiative-taking, and joint decision-making in inclusive educational settings.