Tracking Immanent Language Learning Behavior Over Time in Task‐Based Classroom Work

Abstract

In this study, the authors explore how classroom tasks that are commonly used in task-based language teaching (TBLT) are achieved as observable aspects of local educational order (Hester & Francis, 2000) through observable and immanently social classroom behaviors. They focus specifically on students' language learning behaviors, which they track through the longitudinal conversation-analytic methodology called learning behavior tracking (LBT) (Markee, 2008). From a theoretical point of view, they situate LBT within the ethnomethodological (EM) perspective on social action pioneered by Garfinkel (1967) and relate it to socially defined ways of understanding planning (Burch, 2014;Markee & Kunitz, 2013). In the empirical part of the article, the researchers analyze TBLT work that was conducted in an English as a foreign language (EFL) classroom in a Swedish junior high school. Specifically, they track the occurrences of a learnable (the spelling of the word disgusting) that was emically oriented to as such by the students as they engaged in planning and accomplishing teacher-assigned tasks. The authors then develop an emic, sequential account of the participants' practical reasoning and dynamically evolving epistemic positions. They argue that this kind of basic empirical research refines our understanding of how TBLT curriculum work is achieved by participants as practical, mundane, and observable activities in language classrooms, and that these insights may feed into more applied research on teacher training, thereby fostering the design of instructional innovations.

Collaborative Attention Work on Gender Agreement in Italian as a Foreign Language

“…In conclusion, this study provides data that can be used for teacher training purposes to illustrate a) the potential discrepancies between the teacher's conceptualization of the goal of an activity and the students’ interpretation of it, b) the emic practices enacted by students as they do learning, c) the criteria they orient to (i.e., accuracy), and d) the learnables they identify. Studies of this kind (see also Kunitz & Skogmyr Marian, ) are therefore useful to show how students achieve tasks as instances of “local educational order” (Hester & Francis, ). The findings of such studies can then inspire the design of tasks that take into account the students’ immanent pedagogies (Lindwall & Lymer, ).…”

Local Contingencies in L2 Tasks: A Comparison of Context-Sensitive Interactional Achievements across Two Different Task Types

“…In line with the scope of the current paper, taskoriented interactional settings were investigated by a number of CA-for-SLA researchers (Hellerman, 2008;Hellerman & Pekarek Doehler, 2010;Markee & Kunitz, 2013;Mondada & Pekarek Doehler, 2004;Mori, 2002;Seedhouse, 1999Seedhouse, , 2005Seedhouse & Almutairi, 2009;Kunitz & Skogmyr-Marian, 2017). All of these studies present descriptions of contextspecific interactional achievements oriented to pedagogical tasks at hand.…”

Being a Non-expert in L2 English: Constructing Egalitarianism in Group Preparation Work

“…For students to interact in their L1 when preparing for an L2 presentation is not unusual, as shown in Kunitz (2013Kunitz ( , 2015, Kunitz and Marian (2017), and Reichert and Liebscher (2012). In the transcripts, the talk is presented using a three-tier system, with the original in the first line, based on standard conversation-analytic conventions (Jefferson, 2004), a e-ISSN: http://www.efdergi.hacettepe.edu.tr/ morpheme-by-morpheme gloss in the second, with symbols based mostly on Nguyen and Kasper (2009) and listed in the appendix, and an idiomatic translation in the third.…”

“…Language expertise is thus not only relative, but also transient and situated within the interaction. In addition, among students working together in their L2 or on something related to their e-ISSN: 2536-475 http://www.efdergi.hacettepe.edu.tr/ L2, there may be good reasons to avoid being an L2 expert, as students may be held accountable for what they (claim to) know (Kunitz and Marian, 2017) and as, within student peer groups, there may be negative consequences of appearing to know too much (Jakonen and Morton, 2015).…”