In-service EFL Teachers’ Management of Participation during Teacher-fronted Whole-class Activities

In-service EFL Teachers’ Management of Participation during Teacher-fronted Whole-class Activities David ryška ABSTRACT: Within the sociolinguistic and interactional approaches to L2 acquisition, learner participation is considered anecessary prerequisite for language learning. However, recent studies (e.g. Walsh & Li, 2013) have demonstrated that simply letting learners talk is not enough, and that for any learning to emerge, asolid amount of interactional steering work must first be employed by the teacher. This conversation-analytic study focuses on in-service EFL teachers. Based on video recordings of nine lessons (387 minutes) taught by six such teachers, it explores both the resources that they use to manage the participation of multiple learners at once during teacher-fronted whole-class activities, and the ways in which the learners respond to them. The study shows that there is alarge range of resources which these teachers mobilise to secure the participation of their learners: these include Yes/No questions in the third-turn position, increased wait time, designedly incomplete utterances, continuers such as “uh-um” or acknowledging learners’ turns in advance by referencing apast learning event. Furthermore, the deployment of these resources is often tied to the pedagogical goal of an activity. These findings bear some implications for future teacher education, particularly in relation to the development of their Classroom Interactional Competence (Walsh, 2006). ABSTRAKT: Pohledem sociolingvistických ainterakčních přístupů kosvojování druhého/cizího jazyka je aktivní účast žáka ve výuce nutným předpokladem učení. Vposledních letech však studie (např.Walsh & Li, 2013) ukázaly, že pouze nechat žáka mluvit rozhodně nestačí aže ke zprostředkování učení je třeba, aby učitel do velké míry podobu interakce ovlivňoval. Tato konverzačněanalytická studie se zaměřuje na učitele angličtiny jako cizího jazyka, již se vzdělávají při zaměstnání. Vychází zvideonahrávek devíti lekcí (387 minut) vedených šesti takovými učiteli azkoumá jednak prostředky, které uplatňují během frontální výuky kzapojení několika žáků najednou, jednak reakce samotných žáků na jejich užití. Studie ukazuje, že tito učitelé mají kdispozici velké množství prostředků, jimiž mohou podpořit či zajistit aktivní účast svých žáků. Patří mezi ně zjišťovací otázky ve třetí replice sekvence, více času na odpověď, záměrně nedokončené repliky, kontinuátory (např.„uh-um“) či uznání žákovy odpovědi předem skrze odkázání na dřívější výukovou aktivitu. Použití těchto prostředků je navíc často vázáno na bezprostřední cíl probíhající aktivity. Na základě výsledků analýzy lze formulovat doporučení pro budoucí vzdělávání učitelů, zejména vsouvislosti srozvojem jejich interakční kompetence ve třídě (Walsh, 2006). KEY WORDS / KLÍČOVÁ SLOVA conversation analysis, English as aforeign language teaching, classroom interaction, management of participation, frontal teaching konverzační analýza, výuka angličtiny jako cizího jazyka, interakce ve třídě, řízení participace, frontální výuka OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 77 1. INTRODUCTION Since Firth and Wagner’s (1997) influential paper that called for the reconceptualization of Second Language Acquisition (SLA) studies by giving more room to the sociolinguistic and interactional perspective, researchers have been trying to uncover how language learners interact on aturn-by-turn basis, promoting acquisition through language use. Firth and Wagner argued that the then dominant cognitive, individualistic stance had led to askewed perception of the language learner as adefective communicator (ibid., p.285), and that agreater awareness of the interactional and contextual aspects of language use, and aconsideration of participants’ local agendas, social and institutional roles would reveal learners’ many communicative successes (ibid., pp.286–294). Such SLA, they claimed, would better explain how “language is used as it is being acquired through interaction” (ibid., p.296). For learners to show what they are capable of, however, they must first be given the space to do so, since in the L2 classroom it is the teachers who are mostly responsible for orchestrating communication by managing participation, especially during whole-class activities. Agreat deal of attention should therefore be paid to the way in which teachers fulfil this role. It is then the purpose of this article to look at how one specific category of teachers— in-service teachers— handle the interaction of their learners. More specifically, using conversation analysis (CA), this exploratory study seeks to uncover both the resources used by in-service teachers in order to manage participation of their learners during teacher-fronted whole-class activities, and the ways in which the learners respond to them. 2. BACKGROUND 2.1. INSTITUTIONAL ASPECTS Of CLASSrOOM INTErACTION Set firmly among what we understand as institutional contexts, the talk which occurs in (language) classrooms differs greatly from regular everyday conversation. Yet it is not the physical setting which renders the talk institutional and thus puts various restraints on its organization; as Drew and Sorjonen (2011, p.194) point out, the difference from aregular conversation lies in the participants’ orientation towards their institutional roles, identities and derived appropriate responsibilities, and in the production and management of tasks which are institutionally relevant. Therefore, in atraditional classroom where the participants assume the roles of ateacher and learners, one of the most relevant tasks is the one where the teacher asks aquestion to check learners’ knowledge or to learn about their views, alearner responds, and the teacher evaluates, accepts or rejects the answer. Mostly bearing the names IRF (initiation, response, feedback; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) or IRE (initiation, reply, evaluation; Mehan, 1979), this interactional pattern has moved into the forefront of classroom discourse studies, with many arguing— some favourably, some critically— that it constitutes the default pattern in teacher-led interaction. OPEN ACCESS 78 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 Much exploration has therefore been done into the ways in which more variation could be brought into the classroom, thus making it more like an authentic dialogue (e.g. Mercer, 1995; Nassaji & Wells, 2000; Cazden, 2001; Lyle, 2008); in the Czech educational context, the issue has been explored by Šeďová, Šalamounová, Švaříček & Sedláček (2016, 2020), who mapped the dominant position of the sequence during lessons of Literature, Civics, and History in Czech lower-secondary schools and called for ashift towards adialogic form of teaching (see e.g. Alexander, 2018 for adiscussion about its features). Negative views are often held also in the area of foreign language teaching, especially by those promoting communicative approaches to L2 teaching (for example Nunan, 1987; Nystrand, 1997), claiming that the tight structure keeps learners away from real, authentic communication. Some studies, on the other hand, have embraced amore complex, variable perspective on classroom discourse (Van Lier, 1988; Johnson, 1995; Jarvis & Robinson, 1997; Seedhouse, 2004; Walsh, 2006; Sert, 2015). Walsh (2006) argues that the IRF label is not enough to explain the variety of patterns operating in the classroom; in fact, instead of being static and predetermined, the patterns are dynamic and mutually constructed (ibid., p.57). The main point of departure for these approaches is what Seedhouse (2004, p.205) calls the “reflexive relationship between pedagogical focus and interactional organization”. As aresult, Seedhouse distinguishes between four distinct types of L2 classroom situations— “contexts”, as he calls them— based on the focus of the activity at hand; for example, while the “form-and-accuracy” context manifests itself in the teacher’s tight control of the turn-taking system, the “meaning-and-fluency” context displays afar more varied sequence organization (ibid., pp.102–118). Most importantly, this approach counters the argument that some teacher practices generate adiscourse in which too little space is given to the learners. As Walsh (2006) suggests, different contexts render interaction patterns more or less appropriate for aparticular pedagogical aim, and alarge amount of teacher talk does not need to be perceived negatively if, for example, the goal is to explain agrammar rule in detail (ibid., p.55). All of the considerations above, Walsh points out, have led to abelief that the teacher’s role in the classroom is much more essential than the one ascribed to them in Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) and Task-Based Language Learning (TBLL) and that simply handing the language over to students is not enough; it is the teacher’s ability to manage learner contributions which will determine the success of their learning (ibid., p.3). 2.2. TEACHErS’ MANAGEMENT Of PArTICIPATION As Seedhouse and Walsh (2010) suggest, for any learning opportunities to arise during interaction, a“space for learning” must be co-constructed by the teacher and learners alike, an interactional space where both parties align their linguistic and interaction patterns to the pedagogical goal of the moment (ibid., p.140). This work therefore follows up on anumber of conversation analytic studies which have emerged in recent years and which attempt to uncover the resources used by teachers to open and maintain this interactional space. For example, Walsh and Li’s (2013) analysis of data from two EFL classes from two Chinese middle schools revealed that OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 79 teachers can create the desired space for learning by amultitude of resources which include increased wait time, acknowledging contributions, scaffolding turns, minimising interruptions, allowing extended learner turns, and also handling the learners’ responses through reformulations, requests for clarification, pushing for more information or asking guiding questions. Lerner (1995) focused on teachers’ use of incomplete turn-constructional units in order to direct the participation that follows; he shows how by extending an elicitation question with an additional turnconstructional component and leaving it unfinished (apractice also known as “designedly incomplete utterances”, DIU, see Koshik, 2002), or how by teasing learners with an incomplete list the teacher can push learners to reply. Similarly, Can Daşkın and Hatipoğlu (2019) investigated how areference to apast learning event (RPLE) can help teachers elicit an answer relevant to the ongoing or follow-up instructional activity; the success lies in framing students as obliged to have access to the knowledge because it has been previously mentioned in class. Reddington (2018) observed the ways in which teachers engage in and disengage from an extended talk with asingle student; her analysis shows the teachers’ management to be apowerful mix of strategies which tie the entire classroom discourse together and cater for even participation, progressivity and attention of all students to the ongoing talk. Finally, Willemsen et al. (2020) have demonstrated that even open whole-class discussions, in which students are allowed to freely select aconversation partner from among their peers, still often have the character of ateacher–student–teacher sequence; teachers use various “pass on” practices involving both verbal and embodied means (e.g. gazes or gestures) in order to encourage students to respond to their peers’ previous contributions. As this study will later show, of particular interest to researchers is the third turn within the IRF sequence due to the sheer complexity of actions which take place there between the teacher and the learner. Previous research has demonstrated that the final turn must be analysed in relation to the task at hand and the overall progressivity of the sequence (Lee, 2007; Margutti & Drew, 2014) or that it holds different functions across different classroom contexts (Park, 2014). For example, Girgin and Brandt (2020) studied one teacher’s use of the minimal response token “uh-um” in the final turn and demonstrated its function as acontinuer; when it was deployed with afalling-rising intonation and accompanied by aspecific type of head nod, the teacher effectively withheld the third-turn evaluation and gave her student asignal to continue, thus promoting the participation and creating space for learning. Tůma (2018) reports asimilar practice in the Czech academic setting; he shows how the continuer “uh-um” encouraged students to continue and argues that it often greatly helped manage the tension caused by achallenging question and limited language proficiency of the students (ibid., p.65). Relevant to the study of in-service teachers’ practices is also the fact that not every learner has to go along with the teacher’s chosen procedure. Waring (2009) points out that the IRF sequence is not as impermeable as one might think when she demonstrates how alearner manages to step out of acycle of uninterrupted IRFs during ateacher-fronted homework review activity, and how with the subsequent coordination between the learner and the teacher, other learners are able to take the ground OPEN ACCESS 80 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 and come out with aseries of questions that have piled up during the activity. Fagan (2012) explores how anovice teacher responds to unexpected learner contributions in both teacherand learner-initiated sequences during teacher-fronted activities; the teacher in her data systematically reacted either by glossing over the contributions or by assuming the role of an information provider, in both cases inadvertently curtailing learner participation. Waring (2013) examines how teachers deal with competing voices after asking aquestion; the teacher may either select one speaker based on the acoustic clarity of the contribution, astronger demand for aresponse or the chance it has to move an activity further, or may choose to treat every contribution in sequence. Finally, much of the analysis here would not be possible without the consideration of the embodied work of teaching. Kääntä (2012) demonstrates in her analysis of turn-allocation that teachers tend to rely on embodied actions, e.g. gaze shifts, when giving learners the floor, sometimes even employing both modalities at once to perform two distinct tasks. Mortensen (2008), on the other hand, shows how gaze is systematically used by students to display their willingness to be selected as the next speaker and how teachers regularly respond to this practice, thus providing students with another resource to influence turn-allocation besides the regular hand raising (see Sahlström, 2002 for an analysis of hand raising in the classroom). Sert and Walsh (2013) examined the moment-by-moment unfolding of learners’ claims of insufficient knowledge (CIK, e.g. Idon’t know’s) and the teacher’s management of the situation. They suggest that CIK may result from the teacher failing to establish mutual gaze during turn-allocation and that learners often express CIKs only through embodied means, e.g., headshakes. Their analysis also shows that besides simply moving on to another learner, the teacher can draw on various means, such as embodied vocabulary explanations or DIUs, to further the original learner’s participation and potentially lead them to understanding. Finally, Evnitskaya and Berger (2017) looked at learners who self-select to respond to ateacher’s question but are unable to deliver the answer, and at other learners who compete to enter the interactional space instead. The authors argue against the concept of “willingness to participate” (WTP) as being acognitive phenomenon tied to motivation, and rather emphasize its social, interactional nature. They present WTP as immediate, nuanced, yet complex behaviour often expressed only through embodied means that involves the display of attentiveness to and understanding of the ongoing interaction, anticipation of the exact moment of aspeaker change, and selection of arelevant participant role. The studies mentioned in this section together constitute asolid demonstration of the descriptive power of CA, which is able to uncover the interactional complexity of L2 classroom talk and the ways in which its institutional goals are achieved. The studies also call for the teacher’s greater awareness of and sensitivity to the delicate interactional processes which unfold in the classroom since they may have adirect impact on the amount of learning students do, determining whether the process of learning aforeign language will be asuccessful one. It must be noted, however, that little similar qualitative research has been done in the Czech educational setting (though see Tůma, 2017, 2018). Furthermore, as Waring (2017) argues, CA studies of OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 81 classroom discourse rarely pay attention to the teachers’ level of expertise, rather reporting on agenerally defined language classroom (ibid., pp.470–471). Finally, some of the interactional phenomena— for example WTP and RPLE— are still relatively new and under-researched concepts whose description comes only from ahandful of classroom contexts around the world (see also Gardner, 2019 for amore detailed review of gaps). The present study therefore adds to the existing body of research in several ways: it brings further evidence about some of the under-researched phenomena; it analyses resources that in-service teachers in particular use to manage interaction, focusing on moments where the teacher engages with more than one learner at once; and it considers the potential impact of these resources on learning by observing learners’ reactions to them. 3. DATA AND METHOD The analysis presented in this study is based on data collected in autumn 2019 at Masaryk University in Brno, Czechia. It contains video recordings of nine lessons (387 minutes) from an internal teaching practice course, acompulsory course for students of the Master’s programme “Upper Secondary School Teacher Education in English Language and Literature”. The course is usually taken in the second year and it is designed to provide student teachers with invaluable practice before they do their placement in an upper-secondary school. Irecorded the lessons on two digital cameras, one at the front of the classroom facing the students, and one in the back focusing on the teacher. There were 15 university students— including several students from abroad— enrolled in the course whose level of English was approximately B2 according to the CEFR (see Council of Europe, 2001); the students came from various departments and faculties and were offered credits for attending the course and passing afinal written test. Six in-service teachers participated in the research. The term “in-service” Iuse in this study refers to the level of professional qualification (i.e. an official degree in foreign language teaching) and to their current employment; all the teachers were employed at either Czech secondary schools or private language schools, were aged between 25 and 45, had teaching experience ranging from one to twelve years, and were pursuing the degree in acombined form1 to advance their professional skills. The course syllabus was built around the general development and practice of the four skills, vocabulary, and grammar; several chapters from the second edition of Outcomes Intermediate (Dellar & Walkley, 2016) were covered, accompanied by various other resources. During the lesson, one teacher would teach while the faculty mentor and the rest of the teachers would sit in the back, observe, and take notes for afeedback session which followed every lesson. Each teacher had to teach four 30or 45-minute lessons during 1 In Czechia, the term “combined studies” usually refers to astudy mode which features only alimited amount of contact teaching time, with consultations and teaching sessions taking place only several times per semester. It is apopular form of study especially among those who are already in full-time employment. OPEN ACCESS 82 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 the semester; the weekly 90-minute session therefore always comprised two or three mostly self-contained lessons taught by different teachers. The dataset for the present study contains lessons taught by all six teachers, albeit their teaching time is not evenly distributed. All participants were informed about the purpose of the research and gave informed consent. All names and pictures have been anonymised. In order to examine the collected data Iturned to conversation analysis, an approach designed to provide an empirically based explanation of how naturally occurring human action is socially organised (Pomerantz & Fehr, 2011, p.166). First, Iedited the recordings in iMovie by merging them into asplitscreen format in order to see the entire classroom at once, after which Iproceeded to transcribe the recordings. Before the transcription, some general guidelines were considered (for an overview, see Vaníčková, 2014). For the transcription of speech delivery, transcription conventions from Hutchby and Wooffitt (2008) were adapted and modified so that they also display basic embodied conduct of the speakers (mainly gaze, gestures and expressions); details are described in the appendix. Itranscribed only those parts of the lessons which contained teacher-fronted whole-class activities since the rest was not relevant to the research question; besides, it was impossible to look into the group activities as no voice recorders or additional cameras were used. Turning my attention specifically to those moments where participation in whole-class work is managed, Iidentified 38 distinct sequences in which the in-service teachers are in various ways trying to make their learners talk. Nevertheless, this study deals only with those sequences in which the teacher engages in an interaction with multiple students at once, since Ifound these especially rich with respect to the research question. Therefore, the two selected extracts which will be presented in the next section best serve to illustrate both the range of resources that in-service teachers typically used in the data to manage their learners’ participation during whole-class teacherfronted activities, and the learners’ responses themselves. 4. DATA ANALYSIS Athorough analysis of the data has revealed that awide range of resources is available to in-service teachers in order to manage the participation of multiple learners at once during whole-class teacher-fronted activities. These include the use of Yes/ No questions in the third-turn position, designedly incomplete utterances, continuers, increased wait time during learners’ second turn, or RPLEs designed to make it easier for learners to reply by acknowledging their answers in advance. Furthermore, it seems that the use of these resources is often tied to the immediate pedagogical goal of an activity. In the following two extracts, Iwill describe the employment and effect of the resources in detail. Extract 1 comes from alesson aimed at introducing and practicing various lexis related to the topic of entertainment. In pairs, the students were supposed to look at several sets of words or phrases and discuss what branch of the entertainment industry they belong to. The transcript features the final stage of the activity during which the whole class is checking the answers together; in this particular case, the OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 83 teacher (T2)2 is trying to elicit the umbrella term “theatre”. The episode shows how students react to the teacher’s management of turn-taking and turn-allocation, with the interaction developing into amultiparty discourse over time: Extract 1 (T2_25_10_2835_2923) 1 T2: .h and what about the last one 2 acting costumes lighting staging 3 (1.7) ((T2 is looking around, all students except Yo and 4 Ca are looking down or away)) 5 °what is that° Jan(e), ((possibly in Czech vocative case)) 6 what do you think (.) with Daniel, what did you talk about +points at Ja 7 (1.5) ((Da slightly shakes his head and waves his hand in the 8 first 0.5s)) 9 (3.5) ((T2 starts slowly moving closer to Ja and Da, 10 Ja raises his eyebrows and then looks at Da’s 11 notes)) (Figures 1–3) 12 (0.9) ((Ja is observing Da’s notes, 13 Da is looking at his notes, chuckles)) (Figures 4–5) Figure 1 Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 14 T2: (xxx x) have alook at Daniel’s notes ehhm hhah= +looks at +raises eyebrows Da’s notes 15 Da: =[ehm ] +Ja looks at his WS 16 T2: [what] did you talk about? +steps back +palms upwards 17 (0.4) 18 Da: it could be (0.6) (xxxx) behind the ↑scenes ↓or: +Ja looks at +gazes at T2, +Ja looks Da’s WS mutual gaze at T2 2 The labels T2 and T4 used in this study refer to the codes that the six teachers have been assigned in the original full dataset. OPEN ACCESS 84 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 19 (1.0) ((T2 moves one step closer, leans over slightly)) 20 T2: behind the scenes of (.) what: +Da and Ja look down 21 (1.1) 22 Da: °of° (.) [film ]-making +shakes his head 23 Ja?: [(xx-)] 24 (0.8) ((Da looks at T2 while T2 looks at her WS)) 25 T2: ↑is it afilm-making? 26 (1.0) ((T2 looks at Da; Da looks down at the same moment)) 27 Ja: or:: (.) ((waves his pen alittle)) 28 Da: pre[parat]ion of the +looks at T2, mutual gaze 29 Ja: [(xx-)] +looks at T2 30 (0.3) ((T2 starts nodding)) 31 Da: (film)= 32 T2: =alright preparation [of afilm,] +points at Da and Ja, starts waving abit 33 Da: [(xxxxx )] 34 (.) 35 T2: behind the scenes of afilm, +looks left, still waving her hand 36 does it have to be necessarily afilm?= +looks right +mutual gaze with Mi (Figures 6–7) Figure 6 Figure 7 37 Mi: [theatre as well? ] 38 Ja: [it could be theatre]= +looking at T2 39 T2: =it could be theatre as well, +looks at Da and Ja, swipes her hand from Mi to Da and Ja 40 yes very good +looks at her WS OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 91 Extract 2.2 (T4_1_11_0837_0901) 28 T4: =uh-um so which one is countable +nods +looks at Yo +Yo looks at WS 29 (1.0) ((Yo looks at T4, mutual gaze)) 30 Mi: a [few ] 31 Yo: [afew]= 32 T4: =afew uh-um and can you +nods +turns to Ka, Pe and looks at them +Ka looks at T4 +Pe is already looking at T4 33 give an example +shrugs, palm upwards 34 (0.7) ((T4 looks back at Yo, mutual gaze)) 35 T4: yeah? 36 (0.4) 37 T4: afew= 38 Mi: =s [ t ud en t s ] +looking +T4 looks vacantly at Mi 39 Yo: [afew: ]:= +looks at Mi 40 T4: =afew?= +leans over to Mi, cups her hand behind her ear +Mi looks at T4 41 Mi: =students= 42 T4: =afew +nods, turns to Ka and Pe and points at them +Ka, Pe are gazing at T4 43 students (.) +looks at Mi 44 yes afew stu↑dents +looks at Yo, mutual gaze 45 T4: .hh and alittle↑ (.) is +looks +looks at Mi, at Mo mutual gaze 46 (0.6) 47 S?: un [countable] 48 T4: [uncoun ]ta↑ble (.) so can you +looks at Ka, Pe +looks at Mi, mutual gaze +Pe is gazing at T4 +Ka is looking down 49 (.) OPEN ACCESS 92 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 50 Mo: °ali[ttle°] [food ] +looking at T4 +T4 starts scanning the left side, ends up looking at Mo 51 T4: [give] 52 Yo: [little m]oney? +looking at T4 53 (0.5) 54 T4: alittle ↑food (.) alittle ↓money +points at Mo, +points at Yo looks at Ka, Pe +Ka, Pe are gazing at T4 55 (0.2) ((Pe starts nodding)) 56 T4: °yeah?° (0.7) okay? +looks around the centre 57 (0.3) ((Pe and Ka nod)) 58 uh-um right +looks at her WS It is only now that the teacher increases her engagement in the conversation as she tries to lead the students towards the solution (the difference between “afew” and “alittle”). In line 28, T4 follows up on Youssef’s answer as she looks at him and asks which one of the quantifiers is countable. Youssef looks at her during the pause that follows (line 29), after which he answers (line 31), but is briefly preceded by Michaela who replies to the T4’s question as well (line 30). The teacher accepts the answers both verbally and nonverbally and for the first time extends the participation framework as she turns to Katka and Petra, the group which struggled with this exercise; she finds both girls gazing at her and she asks them for an example, shrugging and with her palm in the upward position (lines 32, 33). Yet she almost immediately turns back and looks at Youssef who is already gazing at her (line 34), inviting him to provide an answer as she first uses the token “yeah” with rising intonation (line 35), and amoment later resorts to aDIU (lines 36, 37). Instead of an answer, Youssef repeats the teacher’s turn (line 39), but his reply comes out in an overlap with Michaela who manages to capture both Youssef’s (line 39) and the teacher’s (line 38) attention. T4 leans over to Michaela and the two look at each other as the teacher cups her hand behind her ear and repeats the DIU (line 40). Mortensen (2016) shows how participants orient to acupping hand gesture in aTRP as the beginning of an other-initiated repair; if the gesture is furthermore accompanied by speech, it usually serves to locate the trouble source. It signals atrouble of hearing, though not an acoustic one; rather, it refers to the fact that the co-participant was not engaged in an interaction with the speaker, i.e., was not gazing at them. This is exactly what happens here; the teacher is gazing at Youssef and turns to Michaela only when she hears her speak (line 38), and whilst cupping her hand, she repeats the quantifier “afew” to signal that she did not hear what came after (line 40). Michaela orients to it as to arepair being initiated, and she swiftly repeats the problematic part (“students”) right after aTRP (line 41). OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 93 The teacher nods and echoes the answer twice, during which she first looks and points at Katka and Petra again (line 42), then turns to Michaela (line 43) and finally to Youssef (line 44). She moves on and brings attention to the other quantifier using another DIU accompanied by rising intonation (“and alittle … is”), looking first at Monika and then at Michaela (line 45). After abrief pause in line 46 somebody provides an answer (line 47), but the teacher does not even wait for the student to finish; upon hearing the desired prefix “un-”, she looks at Katka and Petra and utters the word herself (line 48). She looks back at Michaela and the two engage in mutual gaze as T4 begins to ask for an example (“so can you” in line 48). In what follows, Monika takes advantage of the brief pause in the teacher’s turn as T4 begins to scan the left side of the room, and she self-selects, providing an example (“alittle food” in line 50). Her turn catches the teacher’s attention and comes out in an overlap first with T4’s second part of the turn (line 51), and later with Youssef who self-selects prematurely as well (“little money” in line 52). The pause that follows could be interpreted as the teacher processing the answers (line 53); after amoment, she turns to Katka and Petra again and positively evaluates both answers by pointing first at Monika and then at Youssef (line 54). She also finally receives at least anon-verbal response from Petra who starts nodding (line 55). Two understanding-checks follow (“yeah?”, and “okay?” in line 56); according to Waring (2012, p. 738), the use of such questions at an activity boundary serves adouble purpose: they provide students with achance to ask further questions, and they launch apossible activity-closing sequence before moving to the next activity in case no problem is registered. As T4 receives only afew affirmative nods from Katka and Petra (line 57), she closes the sequence and moves on (line 58). Extract 2.2 demonstrates the elaborate contingent work that the teacher engages in during the third-turn position within the IRF sequence. It can be argued that the beginning of the episode, presented in Extract 2.1, was closer to what Seedhouse (2004, p.111) calls the “meaning-and-fluency” context; the request to produce alanguage rule required more elaborate and less restricted second turns during which the teacher supported the students mostly only through continuers and afew turnallocations. On the other hand, the effort to produce accurate examples of the target language, visible in Extract 2.2, required rather tight control, where the teacher’s role came to the fore and the focus transformed into “form-and-accuracy” (ibid., p.102). The teacher uses the resources built by the students throughout the sequence and tries to follow their line of reasoning; the original question (“can you explain the difference between afew and alittle?”) is thus transformed into asimple attempt to make students provide an example of acountable and an uncountable noun preceded by the appropriate quantifier. Furthermore, the sequencing of actions the teacher establishes (first identifying the grammatical number of the quantifier, then providing an example) is understood and accepted by the students; Monika and Youssef’s early self-selections in lines 50 and 52 can be interpreted as them expecting the teacher’s next action and successfully coming up with an example in advance. In other words, through the sequencing of actions the teacher was able to create aspace for learning in which the students received achance to think about and practice the target language. OPEN ACCESS 94 STUDIE ZAPLIKOVANÉ LINGVISTIKY 2/2021 Yet not all of the teacher’s actions were appropriately understood by the students. Extract 2.2 shows atension as the teacher attempts to extend the participation framework and include other students in the process of explaining the grammar rule. However, while the teacher addressed the girls sitting in the middle of the class— Katka and Petra— nonverbally several times (lines 32–33, 42, 48, 54), she was unable to generate any responses from them. The root of the problem might lie in amisunderstanding of the teacher’s goals and assigned roles; Katka and Petra’s lack of participation throughout the sequence suggests that they interpreted their assigned roles to be only those of unaddressed recipients listening to Michaela, Monika, and Youssef talk, and not those of addressed ones (Goffman, 1981, pp.132–133). The examples presented in this section demonstrated some of the resources which the in-service teachers frequently used in the data when they engaged in an interaction with multiple students at once. Extract 1 showed that the reason for more than one student engaging in the conversation was the teacher’s management of turn-taking and turn-allocation; not closing astudent’s sequence with an explicit assessment resulted in the student’s enhanced willingness to participate, manifested mainly through overlaps with other students. Some overlapping also occurred due to the student’s limited access to the teacher’s embodied conduct (i.e., gaze) through which aturn was allocated elsewhere. Extract 2 then presented the elaborate contingent work the teacher carried out in order to lead students towards the understanding of agrammar rule. The episode is notable particularly for the transformation it undergoes in the middle; while the first part of the episode shown in Extract 2.1 was very loosely managed since the task of producing alanguage rule required more elaborate and less restricted second turns, the effort to produce accurate examples of the target structure described in Extract 2.2 made the teacher assume tight control over the turn-taking system. This way, the teacher was able to establish asystematic sequence where the students could think about and formulate the target language. 5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The present study sheds some light on the resources which in-service EFL teachers use to manage the participation of their learners, and on the ways in which the learners respond to them. Using conversation analysis, Idemonstrated that the in-service teachers from the data had alarge variety of resources at their disposal, some of them previously reported with regard to expert teachers; they were thus able to elicit the desired answer by using designedly incomplete utterances (Lerner, 1995; Koshik, 2002), they employed Yes/No questions in the third turn to bring back all the relevant resources built so far throughout the sequence and thus lead the learners to understanding (Lee, 2008), they provided learners with enough time to think about their answer (Walsh & Li, 2013; Ingram & Elliott, 2014) or they kept them engaged and talking by displaying interest and enthusiasm through the use of continuers such as “uh-um” (Tůma, 2018; Girgin & Brandt, 2020). Furthermore, Extract 2.1 showed the employment of an RPLE framed as aform of acknowledgement in advance which was supposed to elicit an answer. While Can Daşkın and Hatipoğlu (2019) describe the use OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 95 of RPLE in teacher follow-up turns in detail, they analyse its functions as extending corrected learner contributions, repairing incorrect ones, and reinforcing acontribution that has been eventually repaired by the learner. Although scarce in number, my data shows that the RPLE in ateacher follow-up turn can also be used to positively assess the learner’s knowledge in advance and thus create an environment in which aresponse is non-face-threatening; nevertheless, more research is needed to determine whether it represents aregular practice. The study has also examined the sequential organization of turns in the classroom, primarily with respect to the IRF sequence and its impact on learner contributions and the derived quality of opportunities for learning. Extract 1 demonstrated how amultiparty discourse resulted in frequent overlaps due to the learners’ understanding of and aheavy orientation towards the relevant actions within the sequence. While the teacher’s attention shifted slightly after she had extended the participation framework and invited other students to join the discussion, the learner nominated first remained highly active and willing to participate since he did not receive any evaluation. In away, the situation resembles those studied by Evnitskaya and Berger (2017); although they focused on students who were not nominated and displayed high willingness to participate, the way in which those students kept monitoring the turn-taking practices, mainly the moments for possible speaker change, resemble the situation described in Extract 1. Finally, Extracts 2.1 and 2.2 together illustrated the elaborate contingent work done by the teacher in order to lead students towards understanding apiece of grammar. It was argued that with the goal shifting in the middle of the episode, the turn-taking practices also changed; while the task of formulating agrammar rule required longer, uninterrupted turns and therefore was close to what Seedhouse (2004) calls the “meaning-and-fluency” context, the second part, in which the teacher tried to navigate students so that they could produce an accurate example of the target language, required atight control of the turn-taking system, asolid example of Seedhouse’s “form-and-accuracy” context. This was mirrored by the language and resources that the teacher employed; when the focus was on fluency, her contributions consisted mostly of continuers and long moments of silence were tolerated; when the focus was on accuracy, repetitions, explicit assessment and designedly incomplete utterances were used. Furthermore, the tight control enabled the teacher to establish aclear sequencing of actions which was understood and accepted by the students and helped them better think about and use the language. This study therefore presents another case in favour of the more variable perspective on classroom interaction which does not see IRF as the only pattern, often detrimental to the amount of learner contributions, but rather as one shape of adynamic discourse which shifts with respect to the immediate pedagogical goal (e.g. Seedhouse, 2004; Walsh, 2006; Sert, 2015). With the growing focus on how languages are acquired through interaction in the classroom, materialised for example in the concept of Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC, see Walsh, 2013), the present study bears some implications for future teacher education. 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OPEN ACCESS DAVID rYšKA 99 APPENDIX Transcription conventions (adapted from Hutchby & Wooffitt, 2008): T teacher S/ Ss student / students WS worksheet, textbook, or personal notes WB whiteboard (1.5) length of silence indicated in tenths of seconds (.) micropause lasting less than 0.2 seconds = latched utterances [ ] overlapped speech .hh audible speaker inbreath hh audible speaker outbreath sounsharp cut-off of the prior word or sound sou:::nd stretched sound or letter (xxx), (word) unclear fragment of speech word,/./? continuation of tone / slightly falling intonation / slightly rising intonation °word° quiet or soft talk ↑ ↓ sharply rising / sharply falling intonation under speaker emphasis CAPITALS noticeably louder speech <word> slower pace of speech >word< faster pace of speech £word£ smiley or jokey voice bold Czech + the onset of anon-verbal action (e.g., gaze, pointing); due to reasons of space, marks without areference to aperson belong to the speaker of that turn, while others are indicated by their names ((word)) description of anon-verbal activity David Ryška | Department of English and American Studies, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University <david.r[email protected].cz> OPEN ACCESS