Conversation Analytic Perspectives on English Language Learning, Teaching and Testing in Global Contexts: (63 New Perspectives on Language and Education)

This edited volume brings together 10 cutting-edge empirical studies on the realities of English language learning, teaching and testing in a wide range of global contexts where English is an additional language. It covers three themes: learners’ development of interactional competence, the organization of teaching and testing practices, and sociocultural and ideological forces that may impact classroom interaction. With a decided focus on English-as-a-Foreign-Language contexts, the studies involve varied learner populations, from children to young adults to adults, in different learning environments around the world. The insights gained will be of interest to EFL professionals, as well as teacher trainers, policymakers and researchers.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Taiane Malabarba and Hanh thi Nguyen: Introduction Part I: Learners’ Development of Interactional Competence Chapter 2. Maria Vanessa aus der Wieschen and Søren Eskildsen: Embodied and Occasioned Learnables and Teachables in an Early EFL Classroom Chapter 3. Hanh thi Nguyen: Developing Interactional Competence in a Lingua Franca at the Workplace: An Ethnomethodologically Endogenous Account Part II: Teaching and Testing Practices as Dynamic Processes Chapter 4. Jingya Li: Looking beyond IRF Moves in EFL Classroom Interactions in China Chapter 5. Dilara Somuncu and Olcay Sert: EFL Trainee Teachers’ Orientations to Students’ Non-understanding: A Focus on Task Instructions Chapter 6. Eric Hauser: Handling Unprepared-for Contingencies in an Interactional Language Test: Student Initiation of Correction as a Collaborative Accomplishment Chapter 7. Tim Greer: Closing up Testing: Interactional Orientation to a Timer during a Paired EFL Oral Proficiency Test Part III: Socio-cultural and Ideological Forces in Language Teaching Chapter 8. Josephine Lee: The “Power Game”: Interactional Asymmetries in EFL Collaborative Language Teaching Chapter 9. Mostafa Pourhaji: Collision of Centripetal and Centrifugal Forces in Iranian EFL Classroom Interaction Chapter 10. Taiane Malabarba: “In English, sorry”: Participants' Orientation to the English-Only Policy in Beginning-Level EFL Classroom Interaction Chapter 11. Peter Sayer, Taiane Malabarba and Leslie Moore: Teaching English in Marginalized Contexts: Constructing Relevance in an EFL Classroom in Rural Southern Mexico Chapter 12. Johannes Wagner: Commentary: Fault Lines in Global EFL Index

About the Author :
Hanh thi Nguyen is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of English and Applied Linguistics at Hawai'i Pacific University. Her research interests include the development of interactional competence in a second or professional language, social interaction in language learning situations and learners' transforming identities. Taiane Malabarba is Assistant Professor in the Language Department at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos, Brazil. Her research interests include EFL teaching and learning, classroom interaction, language policy and teacher education.

Review :
This volume offers an empirically grounded and theoretically informed panorama of the interactional practices involved in EFL education across a rich variety of national and educational contexts. It provides a powerful demonstration of how a conversation analytic perspective allows us to uncover the affordances and challenges of language learning, teaching and testing as social processes. This well-written, insightful volume provides rich empirical details illuminating the constraints and possibilities of English language learning, teaching, and testing in diverse contexts where English is an additional language or a workplace lingua franca. The fine-grained analyses showcasing the realities of EFL at the micro level of social activity reveal important implications for ELT policies and practices around the world. Speaking 'global' with a breathtaking diversity of authors, issues, and geographical regions, Nguyen and Malabarba’s carefully curated volume offers exciting new exhibits of how conversation analysis may be usefully combined with other investigative approaches to address such central applied linguistic issues as learning, teaching, and testing. The book provides insights into the huge variety of topics and settings currently being investigated by CA researchers in the field of English as a foreign language (EFL) learning and teaching. One of the book’s strengths is that it covers a range of classroom types, teaching styles, learner ages, learners’ first languages and learning settings and that it is therefore applicable to many teaching contexts within and outside EFL. By focusing on EFL, this book helps to bridge a gap in a field full of ESL focused studies and reminds readers of the broad reach that CA has. With a focus on learning, teaching and testing, this volume provides unique case studies, which inform teachers, administrators, as well as language policy, which ultimately benefits the learners in EFL contexts.