The Rally Course:

Learners as co-designers of out-of-classroom language learning tasks

Authors: Niina Lilja, Arja Piirainen-Marsh, Brendon Clark & Nicholas B. Torretta

Abstract

This chapter introduces a Rally Course, a novel CA-inspired approach to teaching

second languages. This approach is motivated by an an understanding of language
learning as a social process that is inextricably tied to L2 speakers’ evolving
membership in the surrounding community and by the need to develop experiential
pedagogies that widen the learners’ opportunities for interaction and support the
socialisation process. Building on recent pedagogical initiatives supporting language
learning in the wild (see e.g. Clark & Lindemalm 2011, Clark et al. 2011, Wagner
2015), we illustrate the overall structure of the Rally Course, describe the main
materials that were designed to support the learning objectives and present a case
analysis of one student carrying out a pedagogical activity supported by the materials.
The chapter argues for experientially-based pedagogical practices that connect the
language use environments in L2 users’ life-worlds with classroom practices.

1 Introduction

Contemporary societies are rapidly changing due to increased mobility of people and
rapid technologization impacting the ways people use languages and interact. This
diversity of contemporary life (sometimes referred to as the era of superdiversity,
Vertovec 2007, Douglas Fir Group 2016, Thorne 2013) makes it necessary to develop
pedagogical practices that react to the needs of todays’ language learners. Sustainable
pedagogical practices can only be developed on the basis of research that advances
our understanding of how second and additional languages are used in the complexity
of social interactions and how these language use situations afford occasions for
learning.

This chapter introduces a novel CA-inspired approach to teaching second languages

by linking real-life social tasks to classroom learning. This approach is centred around
a participatory teaching process that allows second language learners to self-design
their own learning journeys. It is motivated by an understanding of language learning
as a social process that is inextricably tied to L2 speakers’ evolving membership in
the surrounding community and by the need to develop experiential pedagogies that
widen the learners’ opportunities for interaction and support the socialisation process
(e.g. Gardner & Wagner 2004, Hellermann 2008, 2011, Pekarek Doehler & Berger
2016; this volume, Eskildsen et al. this volume). Building on recent pedagogical
initiatives supporting language learning in the wild (see e.g. Clark & Lindemalm
2011, Clark et al. 2011, Wagner 2015), we argue for experientially-based pedagogical
practices that connect the language use environments in L2 users’ life-worlds with
classroom practices.

The use of authentic materials and the importance of learners’ personal experiences in
language learning have long been emphasized in task-based language teaching (see
e.g. Samuda & Bygate 2008). However, so far only limited attention has been paid to
the learning potentials of out-of-classroom social tasks (however, see Eskildsen this
volume). Developing pedagogical tasks that move beyond the classroom extends the
potential opportunities and spaces for learning into the unknown relationships and
contingencies of the full ecology of socio-material resources that everyday
interactions are embedded in. Designing and carrying out such tasks, however, may
pose challenges both for the teacher and for the learners. In this chapter, we identify
some of these challenges and present ideas of how to overcome them and how to
create classroom spaces that scaffold learners in their language use and learning
outside the classroom walls.

From an ethnomethodological perspective learning is grounded in the sense-making

procedures and methods that enable members of a community accomplish any social
activity in different settings (Lee 2010). Language learning is thus closely intertwined
with those interactional resources that speakers use to organize their social world and
to understand each other. In this sense, learning is rooted in action and involves the
development of a repertoire of linguistic and other semiotic resources for context-
sensitive conduct; i.e. resources that enable L2 speakers to participate in social
activity in their life world (see e.g. Hall, Hellermann & Pekarek Doehler 2011, Kasper
& Wagner 2011, Eskildsen & Wagner 2015.)

Earlier work applying the CA perspectives to second language teaching has

highlighted the importance of using authentic conversations in teaching in order to
expose language learners to real-life language and to help them become aware of
language use in interaction (Barraja-Rohan 2011, Betz & Huth 2014). As language
learners work with transcribed excerpts of authentic interactions, they can learn to
notice for example how turns at talk are organized as paired actions or how certain
linguistic structures work differently in speech than in written format. The use of
recordings enables learners to pay attention to the nuances of spoken language and
opens up opportunities for participating in social interaction in culturally appropriate
ways (Betz and Huth 2014, Taleghani-Nikazm 2016). Central to all CA-inspired
pedagogical development work is the conception of language as action. In interaction,
participants do not so much focus on monitoring the linguistic detail of each other’s
turns but rather on finding out what the co-participants try to achieve by what they are
saying, i.e. what they are doing by their turns-of-talk. This kind of conception of
language has – or it should have – radical consequences also for language teaching.

The Rally Course is based on collaborative work in a Nordic network of researchers,

language teachers and designers that aims to develop theoretically grounded and
socially anchored pedagogic practices that facilitate newcomers’ learning journey on
their individual paths into a new language and the new society (see Designing for
Learning in the Wild). The network has its roots in the pioneering work by Gudrun
Theodorsdottir and Johannes Wagner in developing the Icelandic Village in
Reykjavik (see Wagner 2015). The Icelandic Village is an innovative project in which
second language teachers of Icelandic have established a network of service providers
to support second language learning by interacting with learners in Icelandic. This
way language learning spaces are extended beyond the language classroom and the
learners can feel safe in using their second language in various everyday interactions
(in a bookshop, bakery, swimming pool etc.) (see Theodórsdóttir 2011a, 2011b, 2018,
this volume; Theodórsdóttir and Eskildsen 2011). The pedagogic process in the
Icelandic village involves preparing for the interactions outside the classroom,
recording one’s own interactions and reflecting on them back in the classroom (see
Wagner 2015). The ideas of the Icelandic Village have also been put to use in the
Swedish Språkskap-project (see Clark & Lindemalm 2011) and in Finland
(Lilja & Piirainen-Marsh 2016 & under review, Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, this
volume). The Rally Course is an outcome of this ongoing collaborative design process
that combines action research and an empirically based understanding of the
processes of second language learning and teaching.

We begin by introducing the theoretical underpinnings of the Rally Course. After that,
we illustrate the overall structure of the course and describe the main materials that
were designed to support the learning objectives. This is followed by a case analysis
of one student carrying out a pedagogical activity supported by the materials. The
analysis, informed by conversation analytic methodology, illustrates the possibilities
for language use and learning that were afforded by the activity. We conclude by
discussing the findings and outlining directions for future research and pedagogical
development.

2 Theoretical underpinnings
Underpinning the design of the Rally Course was the idea of a car rally: in the same
way as a rally course involves navigating unknown terrain and adapting to changing
conditions, language learning involves adaptation to continually changing
environments and sociocultural landscapes through situated interaction. One can
prepare for a rally course but it is impossible to plan and prepare for every
contingency. Important is also the idea of co-operation: a rally driver needs to rely on
a co-pilot to navigate the course, and in a similar way, a language learner needs other
people to support her in language use and learning.

The metaphor of a car rally resonates with our understanding of language learning.
Following previous CA-SLA studies we view learning as situated, occasioned and
embodied participation in social activies (see Firth and Wagner 1997, 2007, Markee
2008, Markee & Seo 2009, Kasper & Wagner 2011, Eskildsen & Wagner 2013,
2015). Language learning is also a continuous process: language use environments are
in constant flux and a language user needs to be able to adapt to these changing
contexts. This has brought about the need to redefine the target of learning and
reconceptualise linguistic and interactional competence. Our work relies on an
understanding of interactional competence as the repertoire of methods that a
language user is able to use in interaction to accomplish meaningful social actions that
are context-sensitive and recognizable to others (see e.g. Hall, Hellermann & Pekarek
Doehler 2011, Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger 2015).

Because of the situated and occasioned character of language use and learning, it is
important for a learner to gain access to many different kinds of language use
situations that are relevant in his or her linguistic environment. Participation in
relevant interactions in different contexts makes it possible to develop rich
interactional repertoires (Douglas Fir Group 2016, Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger
2015, Wagner 2015, Eskildsen, this volume). From the viewpoint of language
teaching, this can be a challenge since it is not possible for a teacher to know or
estimate what the relevant language use environments for each individual student are
and how to best support their participation in them. In the design of the Rally Course,
we address this challenge by guiding the students first to become more aware of the
type of interactions that are relevant for their everyday life and then to observe the
linguistic and interactional structures that are recurrent in these.

In recent years, more attention has been paid to the embodied and material
dimensions of language use and learning. In particular, CA-SLA research has
demonstrated the central role of gestures and material resources in achieving and
maintaining intersubjectivity (see e.g. Majlesi & Broth 2012; Lilja 2014, Eskildsen &
Wagner 2015). Our own previous studies (see Lilja & Piirainen-Marsh 2016, under
review) illustrate how smart-phones as material objects create affordances for
learning activity and structure learners' analysis of their language use experiences.
Eskildsen and Wagner (2015) demonstrate how certain types of gestures accompany
certain linguistic structures repeatedly over time. This gesture-vocabulary-coupling
suggests a strong link between gesture and L2 vocabulary learning.

Most of the research analysing interactions from the multimodal perspective focuses
on language use situations in classrooms settings. Not so much is known about how
the material ecologies of language use environments outside classrooms afford for
language use and learning (but see Kasper & Burch 2016, Greer, this volume,
Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, this volume). The importance of material practices and
embodied aspects of interactions was a central guiding principle in designing the
Rally Course. The aim was to develop tangible materials and flexible practices that
would facilitate learners’ participation in interactions in their lifeworld.

The design of the Rally Course relies on the view that L2 learning is a process of
identity work, and the identity of a learner is not the only identity relevant for a
second language user (Firth and Wagner 1997, 2007, Douglas Fir Group 2016). The
identities of different learners shape their interactions in many ways and vice versa:
the identity of a person may also develop through the experiences gained in
interactions (see e.g. Norton 2013). Because of this, The Rally Course is based on a
radically student-centred idea of teaching: the students are encouraged to assess their
own interactional competences and identify the real-life language use situations they
want to practice. They are also asked to reflect on their own goals, including linguistic
features that they aim to understand better. Based on this self-assessment, the students
choose what kinds of interactions they want to observe, participate in and learn from.
In this way, the students may focus on interactions and learning targets that are
relevant for them and continue building their language learning biographies and
constructing their identities in situations of their own choice.

3 The Rally Course in action

The Rally Course has been taught in Finland twice for advanced students of Finnish at
the University of Tampere1. In the first course, there were 13 and in the second course
9 participants who were either exchange students or international masters’ students.
They had all studied Finnish for several years either in their home universities (in the
case of exchange students) or on other courses of Finnish in Finland. Their language
proficiency level was assessed as part of the entrance examination for studies of

1After the courses in Finland, the same course and material have been adapted to
beginning learners of Icelandic in Iceland.
Finnish. All participants were at least at the level of B1 in the Common European
framework of reference for languages (CEFR). However, for most of the students,
using spoken Finnish was a challenge. Some had not had many opportunities to speak
Finnish in their own countries. For those living in Finland, it is sometimes difficult for
second language speakers to get opportunities to engage in conversations in Finnish
because co-participants often switch to English (see also Wagner 2015, Eskildsen &
Theodórsdóttir 2017). In addition, the written and spoken versions of Finnish differ
considerably. The difference between these two forms of language is so evident that
learners commonly complain about the challenges of having to learn two different
languages at the same time.

The process of designing the overall structure for the Rally Course and the pedagogic
and material practices was based on the experiences gained in adopting the ideas of
the Icelandic village to teaching Finnish as a second language. On courses of
conversational Finnish for beginning learners, we also established a network of
service providers who agreed to interact in Finnish with the students and gave consent
to be videorecorded. The students’ participation in service encounters was structured
around a three-part pedagogical task: they first planned their excursions ‘to the wild’
in the classroom, and then went out and videorecorded their own interactions, which
they later analysed back in the classroom (see also Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, this
volume). In the analysis of data collected during these courses we observed that some
of the students’ interactions in the service encounters showed features of pre-
rehearsed performances and did not show sensitivity to the ecology of the out-of-
classroom settings. This brought about the need to tie the out-of-classroom activities
more closely to the interests of the learners to make the activities more authentic and
relevant for them. Second, we observed the importance of the de-briefing phase where
the students shared their language use experiences and discussed them (Lilja &
Piirainen-Marsh, under review, see also Wagner 2015), but also recognized the need
to develop more flexible spaces for the students to reflect on their L2 use experiences
and to design materials to support this. To this end, we organised a workshop with
Finnish teachers and interaction designers to develop an experientially based language
course that would be centred on the students’ own needs and interests. The curriculum
for the Rally Course is an outcome of a collaborative design process that was initiated
in the workshop and continued throughout the first time the course was taught.

In order to make the learning activities relevant for the students, the teacher organized
pre-course meetings with each individual student to get information about the learning
goals of the students and to gain understanding on their needs and future plans in
relation to Finnish language. Figure 1 shows the basic structure of the whole Rally
Course.
Figure 1. The structure of the Rally Course
As Figure 1 shows, the first three lessons introduced and repeated the same kind of
learning activities. The purpose was to get the students acquainted with these
activities so that they be able to use the same methods in their everyday language use
situations also beyond the course.

3.1 Raising awareness of language use situations through mapping activities

The first learning activities in the course all aimed to raise the learners’ awareness of
where and with whom they use Finnish and of the potential places and interactions in
which they are not yet using Finnish but could use if they wished. These mapping
activities included a photo journal, a journey map and 'my Finnish network' (about
mapping activities see also Clark & Lindemalm 2011, Wagner 2015).

The photo journal assignment was given to the students before the course started. The
students were instructed to take photos of all the situations in which they used Finnish
during one typical day in their life and to write a little note about each situation.
Figure 2 gives an example of a part of a photo journal.

Figure 2. An example of a Photo journal

Kun minä heräsin, minä menin Parin tunnin päästä menin Minulla oli nälkä. Siksi minun
kauppaan ostaakseni jotakin kirjakauppaan, koska tarvitsin piti mennä syömään jotakin.
syötävää. Minä en puhunut vironkielinen kirja. Kysyin Juvenes-ravintola oli hyvä
suomea paljon. Minä vain myyjältä onko heillä on jotakin paikka. Mutta siellä minä vain
kysyin myyjältä missä mehuja minulle. Hän vastasi, että sanoin, että en tarvitse kuittia.
ovat. Sitten tietysti `kiitos`. kaupassa ovat vain
suomenkielisia ja
englanninkielisia kirjoja.

In Figure 2, a student presents photos of three typical encounters during his day. In his
comment about the photo of a supermarket he reports that he did not use much
Finnish: he only asked about the whereabouts of juices and thanked the clerk who
answered him. In a bookshop, he had enquired about a book written in Estonian and
learned that they only sell books in written Finnish or in English. In a student
restaurant, the only thing he said was that he did not want the receipt.
The idea of a photo journal is that it makes the variety of everyday language use
situations observable. For example, the journal illustrated in Figure 2 shows that all
the interactions are different types of basic service encounters in which there is not a
lot variation in interactional or linguistics structures. The journal also makes it easier
to identify what is possibly missing from the daily interactions and to imagine what
the situations could be in which the students would like to use their second language
if possible.

The photo journals were then used as a basis for another mapping activity: a journey
map. The pedagogic objective of this activity is similar to that of the photo journal: to
help the students become aware of the typical language use situations they encounter
during one day and to reflect on the variety of the situations. In the course, the
journey maps were compiled on the basis of the photo journals. The students were
instructed to compare their journals in small groups and to identify the language use
situations that were similar and recurrent in their journals. Based on these, they
abstracted the language use situations of a typical student during one day and drew a
chronological illustration of these (see Figure 3).

Figure 3. An example of a journey map

Figure 3 exemplifies a journey map that one group of students compiled based on
their photo journals. Like the photo journal in Figure 2, also this journey map
demonstrates that the typical everyday encounters that the students identified are
mostly service encounters, such as a conversation with a bus driver, with a cashier in
a student restaurant and a conversation at a supermarket till. In addition, the students
also identified some other types of interactions, like a short 10-minute conversation
with a neighbour (presented in the upper left corner of the map) and a night out in a
bar with a group of friends (see lower right corner). These more personal exchanges
bring variation to the language use situations identified.

Another type of mapping activity used in the Rally Courses was “My Finnish
network”. In this activity, the students used a simple template (Figure 4) to identify
the persons with whom they use Finnish. The drew themselves in the centre of the
template and added their network of people around themselves following the logic
that the persons that they use Finnish most often with are drawn closer and the others
in outer circles of the template. This activity was also repeated towards the end of the
course in order to analyse whether the network had expanded during the course.

Figure 4. My Finnish network

A homework routine for the students consisted of scouting activities. Scouting means
visiting different physical places in which people are interacting, observing language
use practices and material ecologies visible and hearable in them, and documenting
the observations by taking photos and making notes. The aim of the scouting
activities is to sensitize the learners to noticing the linguistic and material resources
available in their physical surroundings and to encourage them to pay attention to
language use resources in their environment.
3.2 Material practices for planning and rehearsing: Interaction Navigator and
one-shot-video

Another material practice structuring and supporting learners’ participation in

everyday language use situations was the Interaction Navigator. For a learner, the
Interaction Navigator is a paper-based template with a simple structure for identifying
a central interaction and considering what can or did take place before, during and
after the interaction (see Figure 4). During the Rally Course the interaction navigator
served as a tool for the learners to design their own learning journeys.

Figure 5. The Interaction Navigator

The Interaction Navigator was used together with the other pedagogical activities and
material resources to support students to prepare for interactions in the wild, to
engage in learning activity outside the classroom, and to create more flexible spaces
for reflection on site and later on in the classroom.

Next, we will show how the Interaction Navigator was used on the course together
with the other activities and materials and analyse how the central ideas behind it
shape the students' interactions. Our focus is on one student, Silvia. We noted that for
some of the students it took more time to get used to the teaching and learning
practices than for others and Silvia was selected as the focal participant because she
exemplifies a student who appeared resistant in the beginning of the course, but then
accommodated herself to the study methods used in the course rather well. However,
she is not representative of all students who participated in the course.

The examples to follow demonstrate how Silvia co-designs an out-of-classroom

learning task to meet her own needs and interests with the support of the teacher and
the pedagogical framework. The examples illustrate the preparation, participation and
de-briefing phases of the first excursion to the wild in the Rally Course. The students
got to choose what kind of interaction they wanted to participate in, but they were
encouraged to choose interactions that were somehow relevant for them at the time.
Silvia wanted to visit a bookstore because she was searching for a book for her
mother as a gift. She went to the store with two other students and they planned the
visit together.

A number of studies have shown that planning for L2 use situations is a complex task
and may lead to learner behaviours that are not necessarily intended by task
design(ers) or by the teacher (see e.g. Mori 2002, Hellermann & Pekarek Doehler
2010, Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, this volume). It has also been shown that as L2
speakers plan their future language use situations, they may focus on vocabulary and
grammar (Markee & Kunitz 2013). While such focus on linguistic detail may
sometimes be warranted, in the Rally Course we wanted to encourage the students to
focus on the interactional contingencies of the future interactions instead, i.e. to think
about the overall structure of the interaction, about the participants roles and the
interactional and cultural expectations that these may bring about (see also Lee &
Burch 2017).

The planning of the interactions was supported by different kinds of pedagogical and
material practices. In the classroom, the students worked in groups in order to prepare
for the interactions of their choice and rehearsed them using tangible materials: they
built a scene for the interaction using a cardboard stage and acted out the interaction
with the help of small paper-cup figures representing the participants (see Figure 6).
These rehearsals were recorded as one-shot-videos by the participants themselves
using their own mobile devices. A one-shot-video is a videorecording that has not
been edited and that lasts no more than three minutes. The idea is that the camera does
not focus on the person speaking but rather on the materials that have been used to
support the activity at hand. The value of making one-shot-videos is in the idea of
potential audiences: the filming often brings about an idea of the possible audiences
of the film – sometimes the future audiences may be known and sometimes only
imagined. The idea of audience brings some challenge to the situation and
accordingly also pushes the performers to do their best. In a language class, this kind
of activity works as a practice for speaking at the same time as it can be used to work
towards other goals.

Figure 6. Recording one-shot-videos

Excerpt 1 comes from a one-shot-video that captures how Silvia rehearses her
planned interaction in the bookstore.

Excerpt 1

01 Sil: okei joo (.) eli tässä (.) olen minä (.)
okay yeah so here I am

02 ja sitten ää menen kirjakaupalle (.)

and then I go to the book store

03 ja pysähdyn vielä hetken kirjakaupan eteen

and in front of the book store I stop

04 ja mietin vähän näitä kysymyksiä (.)

and think about these questions

05 joita haluaisi kysyä ja (.)

that I want to ask and

06 sitten menen kirjakaupaan ja etsin myyjää? (.)

then I enter the store and look for the clerk

07 ja ää kysyn sitten (.) tai ää (.)

and ask then (.) or

08 ensin selitän tilannettani ja

first I explain my situation and
The excerpt shows that as Silvia talks about the imagined scenario in the bookshop,
her focus is not on detailed linguistic aspects of the task: she does not report on the
questions that she intends to ask, nor does she pay attention to the language she
intends to use. Instead, she describes the preparatory phase and the beginning of the
service encounter. After identifying herself as one the figures, she narrates what she
plans to do before she enters the bookshop. She has prepared some questions
beforehand and she plans to “stop and think” about the questions before walking in (l.
1–5). After that she describes what she anticipates happening after she enters the book
shop. The way she portrays the first moments in the bookshop shows awareness of the
ecology and overall organisation of the interaction. Silvia’s self-repair in lines 7-8
displays sensitivity to sequential features related to the task she has planned: she
begins to describe asking a question as the first action (l. 7), but changes direction and
describes how she will open the encounter with preliminaries instead (l. 8).

Previous research has shown that it is challenging for language learners to prepare for
the unpredictability of the interactions outside of classroom (see Wagner 2015).
Moreover, detailed preparation may turn the planned interactions into interview-like
encounters in which the conversation does not unfold naturally but is based on
consecutive question-answer sequences (Mori 2002, Piirainen-Marsh & Lilja, this
volume). Excerpt 1 shows how material resources and pedagogic practices that
support planning as a process can sensitize students to interactional features that
might otherwise be difficult to prepare for. Extract 1 shows that Silvia pays attention
to the overall structure of the planned bookstore interaction. In addition, the extract
demonstrates that Silvia is aware of the process-like nature of the planning. This
shows in her expression about stopping before entering the store and thinking over the
questions she is going to ask.

3.3 Interacting in the wild: Silvia in the book store

An essential part of the Rally Course were the interactions outside classroom. The
following excerpts from Silvia's visit to the bookstore demonstrate that the interaction
is driven by Silvia's personal interest in finding the right book for her mother. This
real need is addressed throughout the encounter as Silvia repeatedly refers to her
mother and evaluates the suggestions made by the clerk from the point of view of her
mother’s needs. We join the conversation as Silvia has greeted the clerk and starts to
explain what she is looking for. This explanation works interactionally as a pre-
request after which the actual request for help is uttered. Silvia's explanation is quite
extensive and well formulated (l. 1–15).
Excerpt 22

01 SIL: öö mä mä etsin (.) öö joululahjaa mun

I’m I’m looking (.) for a Christmas present for my

02 äidille? (.)
mother?

03 CLE: juu?
yes?

04 SIL: ja siis ööö hän on kans saksalainen ja

and so she is also german and

05 (.) hän ei os[aa

she does not know

06 CLE: [juu
yes

07 SIL: vielä niin hyvin lukea suomea

how to read Finnish so well yet

08 hän vasta (.) alkanut (.) opis[kella

she has only just started to study

09 CLE: [ºjooº
yes

10 SIL: mutta (.) mm (.) joo siis mä mietin

but yes so I was thinking

11 että (.) että mä voisin hankkia

that that I could get

12 hänelle sellaisen kirjan (.) josta

her a kind of book that

13 (.) hän=hän voisi oppia joka (.)

she she could learn from that

14 olisi myös sellainen (.) motivaatio

would also be a kind of motivation

15 (.) hänelle [mutta

for her but

16 CLE: [ºmhº

17 SIL: mä en tiedä onks (0.4) on- onks

I don’t know if there are if

18 sellaisia kirjoja olemassa (.)

such books exist

2
The clerks had been contacted before the visit and they knew that one of the
purposes of this visit was to practice speaking Finnish.
19 jotka voi (.)
that could

20 CLE: nii englan[ninkielisellähän

yeah in English language

21 SIL: [ºniiº
yes

22 CLE: kieles- kielessä ku siellä on semmosia

langua- langauge there are such

23 helppolukuisia että kun alot[taa

easily readable booka available for you when you start

24 SIL: [mmh

25 CLE: englannin kieltä [mutta

learning English but

Silvia gives several reasons that motivate her search for a book: she wants to find a
book that is going to be a Christmas present for her mother, and she also wants the
book to be a source of motivation for her mother's Finnish studies. By detailing her
reasons, including her mother’s language skills, Silvia follows her own plan of
explaining her situation prior to asking any questions. She then solicits assistance
from the clerk by making explicit her lack of knowledge about such books (l.17–19).
This turn also simultaneously works as a request for the clerk to help in finding a
suitable book and is recognised as such by the clerk, who offers a response in the next
turn. The clerk explains that she knows about English books that are written for
learners of the language but doubts whether such books are written in Finnish. She
then suggests that a children’s book might be an option (Excerpt 3, l. 1–3). However,
Silvia rejects the offer and makes a suggestion based on her own ideas.

Excerpt 3

01 CLE: suomen kielessä ei sitten=oo

In Finnish there are no such

02 (ne on sten) enemmän (.) semmosia (.)

they are then more (.) like (.)

03 lastenkirjoja varmaan s[it niinku

children books supposedly then like

04 SIL: [mmm

05 CLE: mikkä on sellasia helppolukusempia

that are like easier to read

06 ja tällasta (.) mutta (.) että voitas

and like that but we could
07 ihan niinku aikuisten kirjaa sitten
like an adult book then

08 kuiteskin (.) [ºmutº

anyway (.) but

09 SIL: [mmm (.) noo yhyh siis

well

10 eh- ehkä niinku=niinku teemasta tää

maybe like like about a theme this

11 lastenkirja ois vähän [(.) vähän

a childrens book might be a bit

12 CLE: [hehehe

13 SIL: tyls[ä mutta=mutta

dull but but

14 CLE: [liian (.) £niin£

too (.) yeah

15 SIL: hän=hän ei pysty vielä (.) lukemaan

she she is not yet able to read

16 (.) romaania (.) mmm (.) mut mää

novel but I

17 mietin kun tää (.) Mauri Kunnas

was thinking that this Mauri Kunnas

18 (.) [on aika paljon

is quite a lot

19 CLE: joo [aattelinkin sanoa justiin

yes I was just going to say

20 että joo ([º- -º)

that yea

21 SIL: [joo tää on aika paljon

yea this has been quite a lot

22 käännetty saksaksi (.) ja: sitten mä

translated into german a:nd then I

23 mietin että onks teillä (.) niin kuin (.)

was thinking that do you have so that

24 ku meillä kotona on=on tämä (.)

like we have=have this at home

25 ööö saksaksi tää öm: (.) vampyyri (.)

in german this vampire

26 Vampyyrivaarin (.) tarinoita (.)

Tales of the vampire grandpa

27 esimerkiksi (.) [ja hän

for example and he
Silvia rejects the clerk’s offer with an account referring to her mother’s limited
language skills (l. 15–16). After that she produces an alternative suggestion by
naming a well-known Finnish author (Mauri Kunnas) whose books have been
translated into German (l. 17, 21–22). The clerk promptly displays recognition, and in
partial overlap with Silvia, produces an aligning response that suggests that she had a
similar alternative in mind (l. 19). However, Silvia continues in the new turn
constructional unit (l. 21) and explains that she has one of the books of this author at
home and then inquires whether the same book would also be available in Finnish
(i.e. the original version).

The example shows how Silvia’s own real-life project drives the interaction and
enables her to draw on existing knowledge in formulating her turns. It also shows how
her planning and rehearsing of the visit may have helped her to deal with the
contingencies of the interaction. Silvia’s turns clearly include elements that she had
planned beforehand (e.g. details about her mother and about the book she had thought
about). At the same time, her interactional conduct shows how she adapts to the
contingencies of the interaction. Recall that in the previous example (Ex. 2), Silvia’s
expression of lack of knowledge served to recruit the clerk’s assistance. Instead of
having to make a direct request, this solicited an offer of assistance and a proposal
from the clerk that Silvia is able to reject on the basis of her first-hand-knowledge (i.e.
the suitability of the suggested book for her mother). This enables Silvia to expand the
interaction in collaboration with her co-participant: it presents an opportunity for
Silvia to display relevant cultural knowledge and articulate her own ideas as an
alternative which is based on her real-life needs. All this shows her interactional
competence and establishes a more symmetrical relationship between her and the
clerk.

Silvia's suggestion is taken up by the clerk and next they move close to a shelf where
books by the author named by Silvia are on display. The clerk searches for the book
but does not find it. Instead, she finds another book by the same author (Figure 7) and
hands it to Silvia. Holding the book in her hands, Silvia proceeds to evaluate it - again
from her mother’s perspective.

Figure 7
Excerpt 4

01 SIL: hm (.) joo mu- minusta tää on ehkä siinä mielessä hyvä
hm yeah I think this is maybe good because

02 että (.) että hän >hän< on tosi kiinnostunut

she is really interested in

03 niinku suomalaisessa kirjallisuudesta että

like Finnish literature so

04 CLE: hm

05 SIL: että tästä olisi [aika helppo niinku

so that it would be quite easy to

06 CLE: [joo
yeah
07 SIL: ämm

((20 omitted lines))

28 CLE: tai siis gallen Kallelan niinku ( - )

or like Gallen-Kallela’s like

29 taideteoksiin perustuvia sitten niitä

paintings those are based on

30 SIL: hm?

31 (~4.0) ((Silvia browses the book))

32 SIL: juu eh (.) ehkä (.) ehkä tästä minun

yeah maybe maybe I should give her

33 pitäisi antaa hänelle niinku vähä- vähän sanastoa (- -)

 some vocabulary of this

34 (.)

35 CLE: °eh°

36 SIL: tai jotenkin auttaa kääntämään mutta (1.0)

or somehow help her to translate but

37 no joo? (.) se olis hyvä idea että (.)

well yeah? it would be a good idea to

38 mutta mä mietin nyt (.) tätä vielä vähän

but I will think about this for a while

39 CLE: joo saatte miettiä [ihan rauhassa

yeah you may think about it in peace

40 SIL: [ joo okei kiitos

yeah okay thanks

The book is The Canine Kalevala, a simplified version of the well-known Finnish
national epic. Silvia’s evaluation of the book (l. 1–3) makes explicit her knowledge
about the book and its cultural references. This assessment opens a space for the clerk
to provide a second assessment and to promote the book. However, the clerk turns the
focus of the conversation to the illustrations in the book and begins an elaborate
explanation about them (l. 8–27, omitted). The illustrations are extraordinary, because
they are canine versions of very well-known Finnish paintings that have been inspired
by the national epic. In this way, the clerk’s turns are designed to a recipient who
already has relevant knowledge and has shown interest in Finnish arts and culture.
Silvia, however, shows no real interest in the drawings. Instead, after the clerk’s long
explication of the paintings, she turns the focus back to language and contemplates
that she would probably have to translate parts of the book for her mother (l. 32–36).
Here again, the real need of finding the right book for the mother’s needs emerges as
the driving force for the interaction: because of the real need, Silvia is able to
comment on the clerk’s turns and ideas even if she does not go along with them.

Silvia’s interaction in the bookshop illustrates how the task that she herself had co-
designed is configured through emergent interaction in the socio-material
environment of the bookshop. The excerpts illustrate how the interaction is driven by
Silvia’s real-life concerns that motivated her choice of setting and the activities that
she planned beforehand. There is authenticity in what Silvia is doing: her turns-at-talk
show sensitivity to the contingencies that arise in the interaction. For example, instead
of simply asking information-seeking questions, she is able to solicit
recommendations which enable her to expand the interaction further and to draw on
her own first-hand knowledge in responding to the clerk’s suggestions. This is visible
also in the way that she rejects the clerk’s attempt to draw her attention to pictures in
the book and instead focuses on language of the book.

3.4 Analysing and reflecting

One of our aims in designing the pedagogic and material practices for the Rally
Course was to make the process-like nature of both planning and reflection visible
and more noticeable and to guide the students to start reflecting on their interactions
right after the encounter had taken place. The Interaction Navigator template (Figure
5) was one of the material resources that was designed to support this. However,
while the process-like nature of planning was observable in Silvia’s rehearsal talk
(Excerpt 1), we do not have recordings from the moments right after the interaction in
the book shop. Neither did the students report on how they might have reflected on
the interactions before coming back to classroom. Back in the classroom, however,
the students were given the task of reflecting on their interactions in small groups. In
this discussion Silvia pays attention to the important role of objects in organising
interaction and to their potential for supporting understanding and learning.

Excerpt 5

01 SIL: niin siinä kirjakaupassa alussa siis ei ollu

yeah in the book store at the beginning there was not

02 mutta sitten kun hän ää näytti minulle sen kirjan (.)

but then as she showed me the book

03 niin siinä on ai- aina hyvä jos on semmonen (.) niinku (.)
so it is al- always good if there is such like

04 sellanen objekti (.) >jo- jo- josta voi< voi puhua

an object that you can talk about

05 eli sitten hän hän kertoi vähän siitä

and then she told a bit about it

06 että ne kuvat siinä olivat niinkun vähän ää vähän vähän

that the pictures there are like like a little

07 samallaisia kun ne olik se nyt aleksi gallen gallelan=

similar to was it Aleksi Galle-Kallelas

08 TEA: joo
yeah

09 SIL: kuvat ja sitten on on helpompi ymmärtää

paintings and then it is easier to understand

10 ja puhua siitä kun se on ihan (.) ihan silmien edessä

and talk about it when it is just in front of your eyes

In excerpt 5, Silvia reports how the clerk showed her a book and how this made
available an object that could be talked about. Although the interaction in the
bookshop does not show how the book may have facilitated understanding, here
Silvia herself explicates that the pictures “just in front of your eyes” made it easier to
understand and to keep up the conversation. One of our aims in designing the Rally
Course was to raise the students’ awareness of the different situated material
resources and ways in which these can be used to make the interactional spaces in the
wild more comfortable and more secure to interact in. In this sense, Silvia’s comment
about the material objects that support understanding and help finding topics to talk
about is important.

At the end of the course, the students were given an assignment to write a letter to
future students of the Rally Course. They were asked to write about their experiences
during the course and to give advice to the future students for managing the course
activities. The goals of this assignment were twofold. On the one hand, the letter was
a form of feedback to the teacher giving information about what the students thought
about the pedagogic process and how they had felt about the activities. On the other
hand, the letter also works as a form of reflection as the students had to verbalize their
experiences and feelings and to guide the imagined future students on the basis of
their own experiences.

In her letter, Silvia commented on the use of the tangible materials and how these
changed her way of thinking about interactions.

Excerpt 6

“Minusta eri materiaalien käyttö oli alussa melko outo

(vaikutti siltä, että se olisi ollut vain turhaan tarkoitukseen
käytettyä paperia), mutta sitten huomasinkin, että se auttoi
muotoilemaan ajatuksia. Opin tästä kurssista paljon, enkä
tarkoita vain sanastoa vaan myös opetusmetodeja ja miten voisin
käyttää niitä itseopiskelussa (esim. puheen nauhoittamisen)”

“At first I thought that the use of different materials was a

bit weird (it seemed that it is just wasted paper) but then I
noticed that it helped me to design my thoughts. I learned a
lot in this course and I don’t mean just vocabulary but also
teaching methods and how I could use them for my self-study
(e.g. recording speech).”

Silvia’s comment highlights how her initial reservations about the use of different
material resources were overcome when she noticed that it helped her to formulate or
design her thoughts. We interpret this as referring to her own process of exploring,
planning, experimenting and reflecting on her goals and language use at different
phases of the task process. What is more, Silvia’s case shows how the course helped
her rethink learning as involving something more than “just vocabulary” by making
her aware of methods that she could use to support her learning in the future. The
process of co-designing her own learning path drew Silvia’s attention to her own
responsibility for her learning process.

4 Concluding remarks

In this chapter, we have introduced the Rally Course and illustrated the material and
pedagogic practices that were designed to raise students’ awareness of the language
resources in their everyday language use environments and to support them in
navigating interactions outside language classrooms. In addition, we have
demonstrated how one focal student, Silvia, carried out an out-of-classroom learning
task. While the experiential dimension of learning has long been recognized as
important by language educators (e.g. Knutson 2005, Kohonen et al. 2011), it is still a
challenge for language pedagogy to make use of language learners’ own experiences
for teaching and learning as these experiences are usually not straightforwardly
available for reflection and analysis. The pedagogic and material practices that we
have illustrated in this chapter exemplify one attempt to build on the learners’ own
experiences and needs in language teaching by guiding the students to identify them,
to capture them (by videorecoding) and then to analyse and reflect on them.

Our goal in designing the Rally Course was to make the language learning tasks
authentic and meaningful by giving the students a lot of freedom in co-designing
them. The students were encouraged to identify and observe the language use
situations that are relevant and recurrent in their everyday life. Mapping activities
were used to enhance students’ awareness of their everyday language use
environment. In our experience, especially the photo journal is a motivating activity
for the students and helps them to see the variety (or the lack of variety) in their
everyday interactions. Also the material support for planning and rehearsing for
interactions in the wild works well in our experience. The one-shot-videos, in
particular, are an effective method to capture the outcome of the planning and to
practice speaking at the same time. An important aspect of one-shot-videos is that in
making them, the focus is on the content that needs to be delivered succinctly
(because of the time limit of three minutes) and not on linguistic structures. When
watching and listening to the videos the students are often surprised by the fluency of
their speech. In this way, the videos also work as a source of important feedback for
the students. Reflection is a crucial part of learning (see e.g. Farrell 2007, Walsh &
Mann 2015), and practices to support analysis and reflection are a key focus in our
future work.
For the teacher, a design-based approach to teaching requires a change of position
from being in control of planning and implementing tasks to facilitating collaborative
experimenting with materials and pedagogical processes. The excerpts from Silvia’s
interactions showed how her participation in the different phases of the task was
supported by her real-life need of finding a book for her mother. This authentic need
made it possible for her to tailor her interactional conduct to the different phases of
the task. In particular, in the bookstore, the real-life need made it possible for her to
pursue the conversation and to react to the clerk’s suggestions and question in a
meaningful way. The focus was not so much on struggling with linguistic structures
but on the contents of the interaction and on getting the business done. The role of the
teacher in all this was minimal. Most explicitly the teacher interfered with the process
during the reflection phase as she asked questions about the students experiences in
the interaction in the wild. However, one of our future challenges is to develop
materials that would support more flexible reflection so that the students would learn
how to make reflection a recurrent part of the language use situations that they want
to learn something from.

The design of the curriculum for the Rally Course has been inspired by the
conversation analytical understanding of language use as action and is based on
existing research on second language learning in interactions outside classrooms (see
e.g. Theodórsdóttir 2011a & b, Lilja 2014, Pekarek Doehler & Pochon-Berger 2015,
Eskildsen & Theodórsdóttir 2017). In the Rally Course, our aim has been to guide to
students to focus on the structures of interaction and on the language use practices
that are relevant and recurrent in interactions in the students’ everyday life-worlds.
The learning target for many (if not most) second language learners is not only to
acquire the language but rather to be able to participate in the society through the new
language. This requires an expanding repertoire of methods for accomplishing
meaningful social actions. Expanding the repertoire means that the methods for social
action become more diversified and context-sensitive (see Pekarek Doehler &
Pochon-Berger 2015). A learner thus becomes able to act in socially appropriate ways
in an increasing variety of social interactions in the community. Language
pedagogies should be able to support this and to provide learners with learning
methods and techniques that facilitate them in learning and developing also after
language courses and outside of the walls of language classrooms (see also Thorne
2013). We hope that the ideas presented in this chapter would inspire future teachers
to explore novel ways of teaching and of supporting their students in participating and
becoming members of their new language communities.

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