ELT Journal Advance Access published online on July 16, 2009
ELT Journal, doi:10.1093/elt/ccp050
© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press; all rights reserved.
Formulation as evidence of understanding in teacher–student talk
Ian Nakamura is a professor in the Foreign Language Education Center at Okayama University in Japan. His research and teaching interests converge on the application of Conversation Analysis to examine and better understand some of the co-management features found in his data of native speaker/non-native speaker talk. This current study on ‘formulations’ is the second part of an ongoing project to build on what he started in his doctoral work on how co-participants keep the talk going. The first part on ‘repair’ as an interactional resource appeared in Language Teaching Research (2008, 2/2)
Email: iannaka{at}cc.okayama-u.ac.jp
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Abstract |
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As we regularly find in exchanges outside the classroom, formulating (the rephrasing of what has been said) makes use of such conversational skills as active listening, elaboration, and affiliation as well as the precise timing of taking turns to keep the talk going. This paper examines how formulations occur in talk outside the classroom including during arranged informal talks between a teacher and his students and what we can learn about facilitating more extensive talk in classroom interactions. Formulating understandings of what one speaker says offers the next speaker a valuable interactional resource to promote both confirmation of previous turns and elaboration in subsequent turns. In contrast to methodological practice where teacher and student are language expert and novice, formulations draw attention to how real-world interactions are jointly constructed for understanding.
A member may use some part of the conversation as an occasion to formulate the conversation. (Garfinkel and Sacks 1970: 350)