Interaction and collaboration across proficiency levels in the English language classroom

Abstract

One aim of adult General English courses is to help people to develop the ability to communicate in English with a diverse range of speakers, including individuals with different levels of linguistic proficiency. However, classes that are streamed by linguistic proficiency level provide little opportunity to communicate with a diverse range of interlocutors during class time. This study investigates peer–peer interaction in multi-proficiency-level class sessions that were introduced to mitigate this perceived gap. In these sessions, participants in multi-level groups completed tasks designed to provide opportunities to develop aspects of interactional competence relevant to goal-oriented, collaborative interaction. At the time of the study, implications of proficiency for participation in the group tasks were not well understood, which impeded further development of task materials. With this study, I aim to provide greater understanding of the relationship between differences in proficiency and speakership in the group tasks. Groups were recorded as they completed the task and conversation analytic methods were used to investigate key features of group interaction. As a result, I identified the recurrent practice of joint-project-initiating moves. With these moves, speakers propose joint action (Clark, 1996, 2006, 2012) in sequential first position for potential uptake by other group members. Two classes of joint-project-initiating moves were identified: canonical first pair parts that make response from another speaker strongly relevant (Stivers & Rossano, 2010), called more-response-mobilising moves, and non-canonical actions done in first position that make response less strongly relevant, called less-response-mobilising moves. Within each class, I describe recurrent actions done by participants, use of response-mobilising features of turn design, and distribution of speakership across group members of different relative linguistic proficiency. For the most common type of joint-project-initiating moves, idea-generating moves, I describe features of moves in next position. The study contributes to our understanding of the interrelation between asymmetries in relative linguistic proficiency and participation in collaborative group work through the interactional competence of initiating and taking up joint projects. The thesis concludes with recommendations for further research based on these findings