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Conversation Analysis and Language Classroom Discourse

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Language and Linguistics Compass 5/5 (2011): 297–309, 10.1111/j.1749-818x.2011.00277.x

Conversation Analysis and Language Classroom

Discourse
Thorsten Huth*
Southern Illinois University

Abstract
Language classrooms are educational settings in which face-to-face talk is viewed as the pivotal
factor driving its major functions and goals. Conversation analysis (CA) has increasingly been
applied to the analysis of language classroom discourse in pursuit of studies that may further our
understanding of what language teachers and learners actually ‘do’ interactionally. This article pro-
vides an introduction to the larger strands of CA research in this vein, focusing on language class-
room discourse in the context of and beyond tasks, repair and feedback, identity and code
switching, and language development.

Introduction
Not unlike physical classroom space (complete with walls, chairs, lecterns, desks and black
boards), classroom discourse is built on a particular architecture of its own – one, as it
were, of interaction (Seedhouse 2004). Teachers and students advance the educational
agenda primarily through face-to-face interaction, and it is this interaction itself that puts
teaching and learning into action. Therefore, it is relevant to investigate how teachers
and students organize their talk while talking and how that organization figures vis-à-vis
the specific goals of the occasion that brings the interactants together in a classroom in
the first place: teaching and learning. This applies particularly to foreign and second lan-
guage classrooms in which language is both the means of teaching and learning as well as
the object. In the presence of various conceptions of language learning on the one hand,
and various methodological approaches to the teaching of foreign languages on the other,
the investigation of classroom talk appears all the more significant. How does teacher talk
reflect the act of teaching? What kind of interaction may bring about what kind of affor-
dances for language learning? How do teachers and students interact, in the context of
what kind of verbal activities, and to what effect? As Hall and Walsh (2002) note
correctly, these questions are central to the language teaching profession and those who
inform and shape it:
Because schools are important sociocultural contexts, their classrooms, and more specifically,
their discoursively formed instructional environments created through teacher-student interac-
tion, are consequential in the creation of effectual learning environments and ultimately in the
shaping of individual learners’ language development. Because most learning opportunities are
accomplished through face-to-face interaction, its role is considered especially consequential in
the creation of effectual learning environments and ultimately in the shaping of learners’ devel-
opment. (Hall and Walsh 2002:186)
The analysis of classroom discourse spans a considerable variety of educational contexts,
countries, and languages. Given the scope of the subject matter, this article strives to

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298 Thorsten Huth

provide a survey of research on classroom interaction with two specific conceptual limita-
tions. For one, this review focuses on talk occurring in foreign or second language class-
rooms. Second, the discussion restricts itself to studies in a particular methodological
tradition: conversation analysis (henceforth CA). Having spurred notable interest during
the past decade, CA-informed studies on classroom talk continue to contribute to our
understanding of the language classroom. As we will see, from this micro-analytic per-
spective, instructed language learning settings emerge as an interactional space in which
not only language teaching or learning take place, but also as an arena in which teachers
and students collaboratively construct a variety of social worlds, negotiate their identities,
all while shaping the process of teaching and learning.

Analyzing Language Classroom Discourse

Not quite a decade ago, Hall and Walsh (2002) reviewed research on classroom interac-
tion from a sociocultural perspective, a strand of research that views the creation and
sharing of knowledge and skills in classrooms as an inherently social activity which is
negotiated by talk. Learning, including language learning, is seen as a matter of students’
and teachers’ gradual socialization into particular interactional practices over time. These
practices form the interactional environment in which language classroom talk occurs and
through which teaching and learning are negotiated.
The basic goal had thus far been to establish particular patterns in teacher–student
interaction as they may be related to particular activities and interaction formats germane
to the classroom environment (such as the well-known ‘IRF-sequence’). Such research is
particularly warranted given that the epistemologies of language teaching have developed
into specific notions such as contextualized instruction (Omaggio-Hadley 2000; Shrum
and Glisan 2004), task-based instruction (Ellis 2003; Lee 2000; Nunan 2004),
or approaches based on various disciplines that investigate language learning (Lee and
VanPatten 2003; VanPatten 2002). These formalized approaches, often striving to connect
related theories of mind, language, learning, and cognition, vary in their programmatic
claims as well as in their reliance on empirical validation. Ultimately, they suggest partic-
ular teaching practices that, if implemented in the classroom, may result in particularly
organized discursive environments. In other words, different teaching methods may bring
about different kinds of talk between teacher and students (or between students and stu-
dents) which may turn out to have rather different characteristics and effects. It is an
ongoing endeavor to ascertain what kind of interactional structures may exists in class-
room settings and whether such patterns in fact do what they are meant to do in light of
our general ideas about how language teaching and learning works. Hall and Walsh
(2002:197) conclude that ‘…while many studies have asserted links between [interaction
and language learning], only recently have researchers begun gathering empirical evidence
for these assertions’. It remained to be seen within what kind of theoretical frameworks
such studies would proceed, with what kind of questions at their core, and with what
kind of scope and limitations such research would have to come to terms. CA-informed
classroom studies have emerged as one such approach.
The adoption of CA as a research methodology for topics concerned with language
learning has flourished particularly since Firth and Wagner’s (1997) widely acknowledged
position paper. Irrespective of some of the conceptual difficulties in this endeavor (see
Gass 2004; Gass et al. 2007; Firth and Wagner 1998, 2007; Kasper 1997, 2006; Wagner
1996, 1998, 2004), the central analytic concepts of CA are finding their way into the lan-
guage teaching and learning literature as we discuss, for instance, turn-taking, adjacency

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 CA Research on Language Classroom Discourse 299

pairs, preference structure, or repair. This is in part thanks to repeated efforts to make
CA’s analytic ‘toolbox’ accessible to the relevant audiences concerned with language
learning in classrooms and beyond (Gardner and Wagner 2004; Liddicoat 2007; Markee
2000; Richards and Seedhouse 2005; Schegloff et al. 2002; Seedhouse 2004; ten Have
2007; Wong and Olsher 2000).
While an in-depth introduction to CA’s epistemological and methodological apparatus
goes beyond the scope of this review, it is relevant to consider some basics of what CA
as an analytic lens brings to the analysis of interaction in general, and how that applies to
the foreign or second language classroom. As a research methodology, CA emerged from
sociological inquiry in the late 1960s, most prominently as it was advanced by the work
of Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson (Sacks et al. 1974; Schegloff
2007). CA is basically concerned with explicating the systematic properties that organize
the back and forth of naturally occurring talk. CA seeks to describe how speakers and
hearers make sense of each other’s conduct as talk unfolds from turn to turn, and how
speakers display their understanding of each other’s talk in their talk. How speakers antic-
ipate, interpret, and produce their own verbal and non-verbal conduct in light of their
coparticipants’ conduct is taken as inherently systematic, inherently social in nature, and
contingent on the use of the full array of linguistic and extra-linguistic resources available
to interactants as they fulfill their social and interactional needs (Atkinson and Heritage
1986).
Central to CA research is its emic orientation, meaning its insistence on deriving rele-
vant analytic categories about talk from observing the talk and the orientation of partici-
pants as it is displayed therein, rather than relying on a priori conceptions about what may
or may not be relevant for the analysis of talk from the outset. As language professionals
seek to understand the nature and the effects of interaction in the classroom, it is under-
standable that their professional beliefs and conceptions of what may happen in a
classroom (and why) would affect the analysis of classroom talk. Schegloff clarifies that
CA is, however, primarily working the other way around:
How can we show that what is so loomingly relevant for us (as competent members of society
or as professional scientists) was relevant for the parties to the interaction we are examining, and
thereby arguably implicated in their production of the details of that interaction? How can we
show that what seems inescapably relevant, both to us and to the participant, about the
‘context’ of the interaction, is demonstrably consequential for some specifiable aspect of that
interaction? (Schegloff 1992:128)
Hence, Schegloff cautions us not to attempt to work with interactional data, including
data featuring classroom discourse, in such a way as to understand it primarily from what-
ever theorized perspective we consider to be relevant for educational research in language
classrooms. Rather, he advocates the central CA dictum that, first and foremost, talk must
be understood from within its inner workings. In other words, we can only understand
what concepts are relevant for the analysis of talk by looking in the talk itself for demon-
strable signs that the participants themselves are making relevant particular categories
through their talk. We can only connect observable interactional behavior to the ques-
tions that may have motivated our examination of it in the first place once such relevance
has been established from the ‘bottom’ of the data ‘up’. Connecting interactional data
generated in a particular institutional environment to the institutional goals of that envi-
ronment is thus seen as a second step.
This analytic principle has been successfully applied to the analysis of talk in various
institutional contexts (Bowles and Seedhouse 2009; Drew and Heritage 1992). In our

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300 Thorsten Huth

case, the connection of observable interactional behaviors in a specific institutional setting

focus on the interactional processes of language teaching and learning to the extent they
are observable in classroom discourse. Therefore, we may rephrase Schegloff’s point
above specifically for the language classroom: How can we show that the teacher is
‘doing’ teaching through talk and how; how can we show that learners are actually ‘doing’
learning through talk and how; how can we show that particular interaction formats in
whole class discussion, partner activities, or group work, are actually ‘doing’ what we
may expect them to, and how? In language classrooms, participants’ display of and orien-
tation towards understanding is critical to the overall purpose and outcome of the talk
itself. This is particularly the case since students and teachers are engaged in the process
of communicating in and about a language which the majority of the participants is still
learning. And since one of the explicit goals of conversation analytic work is isolating and
describing the display and orientation towards mutual understanding, its appeal as a
research methodology in instructed language learning settings is evident.
Since the first applications of CA principles to classroom interaction (e.g. McHoul
1978), more specific arguments have been advanced by a variety of scholars (Lantolf and
Johnson 2007; Markee and Kasper 2004; Mondada 1995; Mori 2007; Schegloff et al.
2002; Seedhouse 1994, 1998; Wong and Olsher 2000). Seedhouse (1994) points out early
on the basic point of departure for any CA-informed inquiry and its use for classroom
based research, namely CA’s transcription practices which document talk to a degree of
detail which was previously not attained. To the extent it is possible through a print med-
ium, CA transcripts attempt to replicate the moment-by-moment succession of discernable
actions in its coding, including features such as prosody, overlap of talk, starts and restarts,
hesitations, cut-offs, etc. (however, see Markee and Stansell (2007) for a discussion of
recent technological advances in electronic publishing which allows the dissemination of
actual audio and video data, and Hellermann (2006, 2007, 2008) who is providing links to
video recordings). This attention to the temporal unfolding of talk in the analysis of tran-
scripts is highly consequential to the analysis if we consider that, in previous classroom
research involving transcripts, much of what actually happens in natural language produc-
tion had largely been ignored or, at the very least, greatly simplified by focusing on the
lexical level. Writing down ‘what was said’ without attention to how multi-party talk may
overlap, without consideration for whether and how long a speaker may hesitate between
turns, without paying attention to how long a particular vowel may be drawn out and
with what kind of intonation pattern – such transcription practices ultimately force various
aspects accompanying natural language production and comprehension into a lexicalized
straightjacket, potentially to the detriment of the overall analysis.
The following review introduces CA research on interaction in instructed language
learning settings, highlighting four general research areas that have emerged thus far.
Namely, these areas comprise studying talk-in-interaction in language classrooms within
and beyond pedagogically assigned tasks, examining the notion of repair, investigating the
role of code switching and identity, and the pursuit of various topics in language devel-
opment over time as they are relevant to talk-in-interaction in the language classroom.

Interaction Within and Beyond Tasks

Language teaching methodology has increasingly advocated the departure from a concep-
tion of language classroom discourse solely based on asking questions and answering them
as the dominant interactive paradigm (i.e. question-answer). Rather, it is seen as advanta-
geous that language learners are put in a position in the classroom that affords the use of

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 CA Research on Language Classroom Discourse 301

the language they are learning for particular communicative purposes (Long 1983; Swain
1985). To this end, language learners engage in particular ‘tasks’ with each other which
are structured in such a way as to allow learners to engage in the ‘expression, interpreta-
tion, and negotiation of meaning’ (Lee 2000:1). Such language classroom tasks are
designed based on two major assumptions, namely that (a) the plan for a task brings about
particular affordances for language learning, and (b) once a task has been assigned to part-
ners or a small group of language learners, the communication prompted by the task will
in fact produce talk and interaction on the part of participants that will mirror the
intended task plan. Hence, classroom interaction is seen to proceed in terms of a succes-
sion of assigned tasks, thusly making up in quantity and quality the entirety of talk in
language classrooms.
A number of CA studies have investigated whether the interaction structures that
unfold in the context of assigned language learning tasks in fact bear the characteristics
that teachers expect them to, thusly relating instructional design of tasks and the interac-
tion that ensues to one another (Brouwer 2003; Hellermann 2007; Markee 2004;
Mondada and Pekarek Doehler 2004; Mori 2002; Seedhouse 2005). Mori (2002) fur-
nishes a study on talk that was audio-recorded during group work in an advanced Japa-
nese as a Foreign Language classroom. The pedagogical task students were to accomplish
was a ‘discussion meeting’ between class participants and invited native speakers of Japa-
nese. Even though the activity was explicitly set up to foster information flow that
equally involved all speakers (i.e. class participants and native speaker informants), a
detailed analysis of the transcripts reveals that class participants enacted interactional struc-
tures generally known from structured interviews. By repeatedly initiating particular adja-
cency pairs (question – answer), students on the one hand and native speaker informants
on the other hand assumed roles (as interviewers and interviewees) we find in interview
situations in the process of asking and answering questions. This was neither planned
nor directed interactional behavior and shows how the initial task plan and the actually
ensuing interaction may differ.
To come to this conclusion, Mori follows the procedure laid out above: starting with
a micro-analysis of the sequential unfolding of talk during the task itself, she isolates par-
ticular structures, which she then relates to structures found in naturally occurring talk
and to structures found in other institutional contexts, and finally attempts to reconcile
the structures of talk with the institutional goals of language classrooms. Students’ under-
standing of the task could also be examined through an analysis of pre-planning talk
among students. This kind of interaction preceded the task and was found to be relevant
for the inner organization of the interactional structures that ensued when the task was
finally carried out. In the same vein, Hellermann (2007) focuses specifically on task open-
ings and their underlying structures, and Mondada and Pekarek Doehler (2004) show
how tasks, once underway, may become transformed and reconfigured by participants as
they engage in them.
As we can see, talk accompanying and surrounding a language learning task displays a
variety of particular participation structures (Phillips 1972) as tasks are initiated by the tea-
cher, and then discussed, interpreted, enacted, and brought to an end by students. This
suggests that language professionals, as Seedhouse (1994) posits, may severely underesti-
mate the overall complexity of classroom interaction. Though many studies of classroom
discourse draw from examples sampled from participation structures manifest during a
‘task-in-progress’, classroom interaction can be shown not to be exclusively organized by
tasks. Rather, classroom interaction displays a much larger array of possible speaker orien-
tations which await empirical description (Seedhouse 2005). Perhaps not surprisingly,

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302 Thorsten Huth

recent CA literature is describing and labeling new interactional phenomena as our

insight into various participation structures and their exact linguistic and interactional
manifestations grows. This includes, for instance, sharing time as a regular classroom activ-
ity (Yazigi and Seedhouse 2005), or story-based lessons (Li and Seedhouse 2010).
Another strand of research focuses on what happens in classroom interaction at transi-
tions from one activity to another and on how particular participation structures may be
embedded in others. Markee (2004) investigates what he terms Zones of Interactional Tran-
sition which characterizes moments in classroom discourse in which teachers and students
negotiate mutual understanding and classroom control, exemplified in his study in the
context of counter question sequences and tactical fronting talk. As he shows, not all of the
talk in such episodes is devoted to language learning, but in part also negotiates social
issues and the management of the classroom environment. Mori (2004) similarly discusses
participation structures occurring at particular sequential boundaries that mark speakers’
shifting orientations to related but separate tasks: on the one hand, students advance a
particular language learning task, and on the other hand, they concurrently and locally
solve difficulties in understanding particular lexical items. Thusly, students regularly insert
(i.e. initiate, carry through, and close) particular sequence structures into the proceedings
of another overarching activity. This local shifting of speaker orientation is also exempli-
fied in summons-answer sequences as individual students summon the attention of the
teacher during class (Cekaite 2008), in the playful recycling of teacher talk by learners
(Cekaite and Aronsson 2004), or in spontaneous, form-focused language play (Cekaite
and Aronsson 2005).
Hence, CA’s detailed transcription practices and micro-analyses of the sequential
unfolding of language classroom interaction have revealed the partial idealization of some
widely promoted conceptions about interaction in language classrooms. Talk in class-
rooms, from the ‘bottom’ of the raw data ‘up’ into analytic categories, hence from the
point of view of those who actually do the speaking, emerges as a multilayered activity in
which local interactional management organizes and advances the succession of activities,
their transitions, and their inner workings. Ultimately, classroom interaction emerges as a
resource for learners and teachers to manage different yet often concurrent social and
communicative purposes to which participants orient as necessary, moment by moment,
turn by turn.

Repair
Success in ordinary talk is often seen as contingent on the overall degree of mutual
understanding. However, understanding is not always a given. One of the regular features
of talk-in-interaction identified by conversation analysts is the notion of repair, a mecha-
nism that allows speakers to identify problems in speaking, hearing, or understanding in
talk, and potentially to resolve them (Schegloff et al. 1977). Repair can be analyzed in
light of where it occurs relative to a trouble source, who initiates and who resolves the
repair effort, and the outcome, i.e. success or failure of repair efforts.
For language classrooms, the interactional organization of repair is of interest because
mutual understanding among teachers and students is contingent on more than one lan-
guage, and students master one of these languages only in parts. Repair may occur in var-
ious interactional contexts, such as in teacher–whole class interaction, in individual
teacher–student interaction, and in student–student interaction during partner or group
work, thus serving potentially different purposes. CA classroom studies have found a
range of regular classroom phenomena to benefit from being analyzed in light of repair

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 CA Research on Language Classroom Discourse 303

(Brouwer 1999; Hall 2007; Hellermann 2009; Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain 2003; Seed-
house 2001, 2007, 2010).
Brouwer (1999) shows that instructional materials that target listening skills in the class-
room can be improved if they are informed by a thorough understanding of repair in nat-
urally occurring conversation. However, repair as it occurs in mundane conversation and
repair in language classroom interaction may serve different functions, prompting the ana-
lyst to contextualize specific repair practices according to the pedagogical focus in which it
occurs (Seedhouse 1999). Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain (2003) demonstrate that the orga-
nization of repair in language classrooms may not only reflect interactants’ specific percep-
tion of their respective classroom roles (i.e. as teachers and learners), but also that these
conceptions of roles affect their access to repair as a resource. Access to repair, however, is
consequential for learners’ success since repair is also implicated in how learners modify
their input and output, a process currently viewed as central to driving language learning
(VanPatten 2002). Hellermann (2009) provides a case study on how repair as an interac-
tional resource gradually develops in one language learner and shows that this development
is not solely a matter of interactional development, but that the emergence of repair
behaviors by learners is also tied to their overall language development. Seedhouse (2001),
on the other hand, focuses on teacher discourse, demonstrating how corrective feedback
by the teacher can be viewed through the CA concept of repair. The findings suggest that
the specific use or omission of particular repair behaviors by language teachers may convey
implicit and possibly unintended pedagogical messages to students.
Hence, applying repair to the analysis of language classroom discourse may inform
teachers’ understanding of the interactional contingencies of the very talk they strive to
facilitate for the purposes of language learning. The kind of repair work found in lan-
guage classrooms provides insight into teachers’ and students’ perceptions and instantia-
tions of their respective roles, and it is implicated in how learners modify their
orientation to each other in terms of comprehension and production. Finally, repair may,
by token of its mere presence or absence in teacher talk, convey implicit messages to stu-
dents. While debate on classifying repair and its functions in classroom settings continues
(Hall 2007; Seedhouse 2007), we can see that an understanding of one of CA’s funda-
mental analytic tools provides valuable insight into some of the most consequential aspects
of language classroom interaction.

Identity, Code Switching

The institutional nature of language classrooms pre-assigns at least two clear roles for the
participants: there are teachers and learners, and that which teachers and learners respec-
tively ‘do’ through their interaction can be (and has often been) seen predominantly in
light of these two specific roles. We noted above that the identities of teachers and learn-
ers as teachers and learners may surface in classroom interaction insofar as they can be
traced to the presence or absence of particular interactional strategies (e.g. repair). How-
ever, these specific identities are not the only potentially relevant ones in classroom talk.
As Firth and Wagner (1997:292) state, notions of teacher or student identity are only
selected identities among other possible ones which may be relevant simultaneously in a
given situation. We note that, if we follow CA’s data-driven approach, the relevance of a
speaker identity to the conduct of teachers or students would require the analyst to show
that and how particular identities in fact are made relevant by participants in their talk,
how they are collaboratively ‘talked into being’ for the interaction-in-progress (Antaki
and Widdecombe 1998).

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Mori and Hasegawa (2009) provide an analysis of learners’ word searches during a
task-in-progress. As the analysis suggests, as students negotiate a particular task with the
instructional materials on the one hand and their talk on the other hand, their conduct
reflects their particular, locally relevant identity as language learners. In CA parlance,
they are ‘doing being a language learner’ to the extent that their ‘being’ learners is
demonstrably reflected in their ‘doing’ learning in their stepwise advancement of the
task through the back and forth of their talk. Kasper (2004) provides an example of
how students display their orientation to particular identities in their talk beyond the
classic ‘teacher’ and ‘student’. In an analysis of dyadic talk among language learners, she
traces how the identities of ‘target language expert, target language novice’ surface in
interaction. What is notable in both analyses is that these identities, while omnirelevant
in terms of being, only become relevant in terms of ‘doing’ (i.e. in terms of being
demonstrably foregrounded by speakers in talk) in particular situational and sequential
environments, and not in others. Hence, if analyzed based on actual classroom talk,
identity must be seen as situated, as relevant to an interaction only if situationally
foregrounded.
Richards (2006) pursues a similar direction as he applies Zimmerman’s (1998) suggested
identity types to the analysis of language classroom interaction, namely that of (a) dis-
course identity, (b) situated identity, and (c) transportable identity (60). The first refers to
identities assumed by speakers in a particular sequential context (e.g. questioner,
answerer); the second are identities surrounding speakers in particular contexts (e.g. tea-
cher or learner in a classroom); the last includes all the thinkable identities residing in a
given individual and which may well surface in talk (e.g. mother, motorcyclist, ice cream
enthusiast). Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cain (2005) examine this process in the context of
code switching, showing that learners do not simply use their L1 as a handy resource for
communication when the L2 fails them. Rather, the respective use of L1 and L2 is
shown to be strategically used by language learners to contextualize and frame the situated
meaning of their utterances. Therefore, code switching constitutes a resource for learners
to negotiate their identities as participants of either the L1 or L2 community. Üstünel
and Seedhouse (2005) examine the orderliness of teacher-induced code switching, its
functions, and its effects for the unfolding of classroom talk. We may note that here,
research on language classrooms specifically and research on classroom discourse in gen-
eral may benefit greatly from one another. Some work, particularly in bilingual education
settings, has already been undertaken (Gumperz and Cook-Gumperz 2005) and provides
a perspective on code choice and code switching which is largely commensurate with the
conception of the (language) classroom as a community of (interactional) practice central
in this discussion.
In sum, examining code switching in the language classroom shows that it is not
merely a mechanical choice by speakers between available linguistic systems, nor can
the investigation of how identities are co-constructed in classroom talk be reduced to
those identities most commonly foregrounded in classroom research, namely that of
teachers and learners. Rather, speaker identity as well as code switching provides
systematic resources for teachers and learners to construct and organize the social space
of language classrooms. Accordingly, Richards (2006) argues that viewing the sum of
interactional behaviors surfacing in language classrooms exclusively as a result of the
institutional identities (teachers, students) misses the mark, because it may result in fail-
ing to acknowledge significant pedagogical opportunities on the one hand, and possible
affordances for language learning on the other (see also Block 2007 and Ellwood 2008
on the topic).

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 CA Research on Language Classroom Discourse 305

Language Development over Time

Another strand of research brings us back to the beginning of our discussion. If the inter-
actional architecture of language classrooms is viewed as comprising a community of
(interactional) practice, then the question is not only what the individual elements of this
architecture may be in terms of the studies reviewed above. It is furthermore relevant to
trace the process of how teachers and students collaboratively establish these practices,
how these practices may change over time, and how such development may be impli-
cated in the temporal development of learners’ overall linguistic and interactional compe-
tencies. In short, it is relevant to investigate to which extent the development of such
competencies can be seen as learning.
It must be noted that much of the debate surrounding CA as an analytic tool for mat-
ters situated in SLA has centered on whether language learning may at all be within CA’s
purview. This is a central methodological consideration given that different strands of
SLA research may delineate the notions of language, learning, and cognition quite differ-
ently (Mori and Markee 2009 and Kasper 2009 provide recent accounts). To the extent
that ‘change over time’ (Brouwer and Wagner 2004) can be seen as a concept defining
the temporal development of linguistic and communicative competencies in language
learners, and to the extent that this change may be the demonstrable result of language
classroom interaction and the process of gradual socialization, only a few longitudinal CA
studies exist. Hellermann (2008, 2009) presents some of the first longitudinal data on
how language learners participate and organize task openings over time and how repair
practices may develop over time. In a case study, Cekaite (2007) examines the participa-
tion structures of one younger learner in multiparty talk over time, showing that a process
of gradual socialization into particular interactional structures can be observed on the
micro level. Overall, it can be said that longitudinal CA research is only beginning to
produce empirical evidence about developmental processes underlying the communicative
and interactional behaviors of teachers and learners in language classrooms. What remains
for now is the preliminary insight that interaction serves both as process and product of
learning (Hall 2010) and that longitudinal CA research on topics in language development
is a methodologically challenging undertaking (Markee 2008; Markee and Seo 2009).

Conclusion
I have presented a review of empirical studies analyzing language classroom discourse
from a conversation analytic perspective. From the micro-perspective afforded by the
analysis of the moment-by-moment unfolding of classroom interaction, we have seen that
this kind of interaction is built on an intricate architecture comprised of various participa-
tion structures. Language classroom discourse is by no means restricted to the linguistic
and interactional execution of particular tasks by learners, but rather reveals a microcosm
of locally relevant participant orientations. Through language classroom discourse, various
identities are being negotiated by teachers and learners respectively, and such perceived
and interactionally realized roles may affect participants’ access to particular interactional
resources in the process of teaching and ⁄ or learning. Furthermore, we have seen that
classroom interaction is both the process and product of gradual socialization and negotia-
tion over time. The reviewed studies have in common that they document how talk-
in-interaction actually works in instructed language learning settings rather than asserting
how it should theoretically work. Ultimately, such inquiry has moved the field beyond
the exclusive focus on question–answer sequences or the IRF sequence (Waring 2009).

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306 Thorsten Huth

The pedagogical implications of CA-informed classroom studies for instructed lan-

guage learning are emerging only slowly (Freeman 2007; Lantolf and Johnson 2007;
Mori 2007). However, CA appears to have several promising applications for language
teachers and methodologists. For one, CA may inform the format and interactional
design of language learning tasks in the classroom. Second, a CA-informed understand-
ing of the sequential unfolding of talk in teacher–whole class interaction may inform
teachers’ interactional practices (Lazaraton and Ishihara 2005; Wong and Zhang Waring
2009). This applies similarly to teachers’ conceptions of what kind of tasks students
engage in during class time and of how to structure them. A third avenue is the crea-
tion and evaluation of instructional materials, including assessment. Wong (2002, 2007)
evaluates textbook dialogs with CA techniques and calls for the consideration of some
of the principles underlying naturally occurring conversation when instructional materials
that feature ‘natural’ talk are created. Barraja-Rohan (1997) and Huth and Taleghani-
Nikazm (2006) discuss how CA-informed findings can be integrated into the sec-
ond ⁄ foreign language classroom as learning targets, Huth (2007, 2010) provides guidance
for materials development in this vein and also addresses how such pedagogical interven-
tion may foster intercultural learning (Huth 2006). A number of studies have applied
CA techniques in the context of interactive oral proficiency testing, offering direction
not only on what to evaluate in student performance in oral tests, but also on how to
conduct such tests (Egbert 1998; He 1998; Jenkins and Parra 2003; Kim and Suh 1998;
Lazaraton 2002).
We end with a methodological caution (see Zuengler and Mori 2002 for a detailed
cross-methodological discussion). Even if CA is able to provide important analytic tools
for the analysis of classroom interaction (e.g. sequences, adjacency pairs, repair), the
insight gleaned from applying these tools, in keeping with CA’s ethnomethodological
roots, does not primarily establish linguistic structures akin to syntactic ‘rules’ along a lin-
guistic-descriptivist program. As Seedhouse (2007) notes, one is well advised to avoid
using CA as a handy codification system of patterned behaviors observable in instructed
language learning. CA’s ethnomethodological principles have been devised from the out-
set to uncover the interactional processes underlying naturally occurring talk and how
that talk is shaped by the social action of the speakers involved. When applying such
research to the language classroom, the analyst’s work, accordingly, is not to merely
‘code’ speakers’ interactional behavior, which would reverse the intended emic analysis
into an etic one. Rather, the goal is to trace the social action achieved by speakers
through their interactional behavior, ultimately in order to answer the questions of ‘how
they do this’ (Seedhouse 2007:527) and to what effect. Beyond some of the practical
applications outlined above, the theoretical implications of such research presently await
systematic consideration and integration into our larger models of language classroom
communication with all its goals, functions, and affordances for learning.

Short Biography
Thorsten Huth’s research is located at the intersection of language and social interaction,
second language acquisition, and foreign language pedagogy. He has authored papers in
these areas for Modern Language Journal, Journal of Pragmatics, Language Teaching Research, Die
Unterrichtspraxis ⁄ Teaching German, and Multilingua. His current research investigates how
social interaction is implicated in the emergence and development of non-primary
languages and how pragmatics can be taught in the foreign language classroom. He holds a
PhD from the University of Kansas and teaches at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.

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 CA Research on Language Classroom Discourse 307

Note
* Correspondence address: Thorsten Huth, Foreign Languages and Literatures, Southern Illinois University, 1000
Faner Drive, Carbondale, IL 62901 4521, USA. E-mail: [email protected]

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