A Chorus Line: Engaging (or Not) with the Open Floor

A Chorus Line: Engaging (or Not) with the Open Floor

Christine JACKNICK & Sarah C. CREIDER

ÖZET
Turn-taking in classrooms has long been a topic of interest to discourse analysts, with attention paid to turn allocation in teacher-fronted settings (McHoul, 1978; Mehan, 1979), and recent research identifying teacher practices for managing "competing voices" (Waring, 2013). This study builds on such work, asking how students engage with an open floor in "materials mode" (Walsh, 2006, 2011), where teacher and students are focused on a written text and students respond in apparent chorus. We are interested in looking at students who actively bid for turns as well as those who do not contribute verbally. Based on videotaped data from an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom and from a college reading class (both in the United States), this multimodal conversation analytic study (Mondada, 2016) identifies relevant interactional resources and practices, including talk, gaze, body position, gesture, and the physical environment. Findings suggest that 1) these apparently mundane interactions are a site for complex actions on the parts of individual students, and 2) the focus on text materials in these exchanges has consequences for participation, including temporality, sequentiality, and turn-taking. Pedagogical implications include problemetizing motivations and objectives for a common classroom ritual.

ABSTRACT
Turn-taking in classrooms has long been a topic of interest to discourse analysts, with attention paid to turn allocation in teacher-fronted settings (McHoul, 1978; Mehan, 1979), and recent research identifying teacher practices for managing "competing voices" (Waring, 2013). This study builds on such work, asking how students engage with an open floor in "materials mode" (Walsh, 2006, 2011), where teacher and students are focused on a written text and students respond in apparent chorus. We are interested in looking at students who actively bid for turns as well as those who do not contribute verbally. Based on videotaped data from an English as a Second Language (ESL) classroom and from a college reading class (both in the United States), this multimodal conversation analytic study (Mondada, 2016) identifies relevant interactional resources and practices, including talk, gaze, body position, gesture, and the physical environment. Findings suggest that 1) these apparently mundane interactions are a site for complex actions on the parts of individual students, and 2) the focus on text materials in these exchanges has consequences for participation, including temporality, sequentiality, and turn-taking. Pedagogical implications include problemetizing motivations and objectives for a common classroom ritual.

ANAHTAR KELİMELER: multimodality, conversation analysis, choral response

KEYWORDS: multimodality, conversation analysis, choral response

DOI : [PDF]