Abstract
In this text we summarize the chapters contained in Part II. That is, after a short introduction to the specific research area addressed by the chapters, we briefly summarize the content of: Evnitskaya (this volume), Kääntä (this volume) and Lee (this volume).
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Part II presents research in content-based language classrooms. This approach to teaching language and content is called content-based instruction (CBI) in the North American context and Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) in Europe. CBI/CLIL has three main goals: (1) teaching and learning language through (2) content, while (3) developing academic skills that are both general and content-specific (i.e., specific to the subject matter being taught). Although the conceptualization of CBI/CLIL as a method has been debated (see Cenoz et al. 2014; Dalton-Puffer et al. 2014) and investigations into CBI/CLIL classroom practices are not limited to CA methodology (see Nikula and Moore 2019; Pavón Vázquez and Ramos Ordóñez 2019), the interactional dynamics of teaching and learning in CBI/CLIL classrooms have been well documented by CA researchers. A growing number of studies has focused on a variety of interactional and pedagogical phenomena, including epistemic search sequences in peer interactions (Jakonen and Morton 2015), clarification requests (Kääntä and Kasper 2018), definitional practices (Kääntä et al. 2016), vocabulary explanations (Morton 2015), multimodal resources in students’ explanations (Kupetz 2011), and multimodal displays of willingness to participate (Evnitskaya and Berger 2017), among others. As demonstrated by the chapters in this volume, CA researchers of classroom interaction are continually investigating CBI/CLIL classrooms.
The first two chapters in this section examine examples of CLIL in two different countries: Spain and Finland. More specifically, in her chapter Evnitskaya (this volume) uses a multimodal CA methodology to show how facework (see Goffman 1967; Lerner 1996) and collaborative learning are achieved in real time in a primary school mathematics classroom in Barcelona. Investigating a revision lesson in which groups of students carry out a collaborative task aimed at revising geometrical concepts, Evnitskaya explicates how participants display a strong preference for affiliation and agreement while orienting to the group tasks at hand. Her multimodal analysis reveals the ways students co-construct alignment through the use of their first languages, manipulation of material objects, and positive assessments. The chapter has pedagogical implications, advising CLIL teachers to give students guidelines for group work that include aspects of social interaction (e.g., giving opinions, agreeing and disagreeing).
In the following chapter, Kääntä (this volume) situates her analysis of teachers’ definitional practices in physics and history lessons in the theoretical context of CLIL research. More specifically, Kääntä draws on but also respecifies Dalton-Puffer’s (2013, 2016) theoretical construct of cognitive discourse functions by using the methodological power of multimodal CA. The author demonstrates how participants orient to various semiotic resources (e.g. language, gestures, and objects) as they do definition sequences in real time (see also Kääntä, Kasper, and Piirainen-Marsh 2016; Kääntä and Kasper 2018). More specifically, Kääntä shows that, while there are obvious differences in how the two teachers do subject-specific definition talk (for example, in their use of technical versus everyday vocabulary and how they use gestures and objects found in the local environment), there are also important similarities. In fact, definitions in both classrooms focus on vocabulary and conceptual issues and emerge as locally contingent answers to students’ problems in understanding during the course of extended, multi-unit turns. Translation and synonyms are also frequently used. The chapter therefore shows that definitional practices are complex discourse objects.
Finally, Lee (this volume) argues that, in order to fully understand how teachers’ work-practices are achieved in classroom discourse, we need to develop sequential analyses of extended teaching action sequences that go beyond the canonical Initiation-Response-Evaluation/Feedback sequence (see Mehan 1979; Sinclair and Coulthard 1975) massively found in teacher-fronted classroom talk in many different countries. Lee draws on classroom interaction data that come from two EFL content courses and one ESL content course at universities in South Korea and the United States, respectively. He documents how, as teachers worked out in real time what students did or did not understand at any one time in the unfolding interaction, they adjusted the order in which they addressed students’ problems. It is by documenting how such topical shifts are achieved on the fly by teachers that researchers and practitioners can get an empirically based sense of how teachers’ interactional work-practices function as orderly courses of actions.
References
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Dalton-Puffer, C. (2013). A construct of cognitive discourse functions for conceptualising content-language integration in CLIL and multilingual education. European Journal of Applied Linguistics, 1(2), 216–253. https://doi.org/10.1515/eujal-2013-0011.
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Markee, N., Kunitz, S., Sert, O. (2021). Introduction to Part II. In: Kunitz, S., Markee, N., Sert, O. (eds) Classroom-based Conversation Analytic Research. Educational Linguistics, vol 46. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-52193-6_8
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