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Articles

Vol. 12 No. 1 (2009)

Orientation to language code and actions in group work

  • David Aline
  • Yuri Hosoda
Submitted
October 15, 2012

Abstract

This conversation analytic study reveals how learners themselves, as speakers and listeners, demonstrate their own orientation to language code and actions on a moment by moment basis during collaborative tasks in English as a foreign language classrooms. The excerpts presented in this article were drawn from 26 hours of audio- and video-recorded small group discussions by Japanese university students. The analysis of the data revealed the following three aspects of participants’ orientations: (a) speakers’ orientation to both language code and actions within a single strip of talk, (b) differential orientations between speakers and listeners, and (c) the lack of a clear distinction and irrelevance (for the participants) of the boundary between participants’ orientations to language code and actions. The findings of this study implicate the relationship between the level of participants’ language proficiency and the occurrence of other-assistance on language code.