Speaking in turns and sequences: Interactional competence as a target construct in testing speaking

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Roever ◽  
Gabriele Kasper
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Oral Proficiency ◽  
Interactional Competence ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Target Construct ◽  
Shared Understandings

In the assessment of speaking, a psycholinguistically based speaking construct has predominated. In this paper, we argue for the integration of the construct of interactional competence (IC) in speaking assessments to broaden the range of defensible inferences from speaking tests. IC emphasizes the co-constructed nature of interaction and enables the rating of L2 users’ ability to deploy interactional tools that lead to shared understandings. Recent work on IC shows that levels of development can be distinguished, for example, in the sequential organization of social actions such as requests and refusals. This can in turn inform interactionally specific ratings. Furthermore, an IC perspective allows a fine-grained analysis of interactions between examiners and test takers to detect effects of examiner talk. Apparent misunderstandings or disfluencies by test takers can be examiner-induced with the test taker’s response actually demonstrating interactional ability rather than lack of proficiency. We argue that inclusion of IC as a construct in testing speaking opens new perspectives on oral proficiency and enhances the validity of speaking assessments.

How Artefacts Do Leadership: A Ventriloquial Analysis

2021 ◽  
pp. 089331892199807
Author(s):  
Jonathan Clifton ◽  
Fernando Fachin ◽  
François Cooren
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Distributed Leadership ◽  
Network Theory ◽  
Actor Network Theory ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Human Actors

To date there has been little work that uses fine-grained interactional analyses of the in situ doing of leadership to make visible the role of non-human as well as human actants in this process. Using transcripts of naturally-occurring interaction as data, this study seeks to show how leadership is co-achieved by artefacts as an in-situ accomplishment. To do this we situate this study within recent work on distributed leadership and argue that it is not only distributed across human actors, but also across networks that include both human and non-human actors. Taking a discursive approach to leadership, we draw on Actor Network Theory and adopt a ventriloquial approach to sociomateriality as inspired by the Montreal School of organizational communication. Findings indicate that artefacts “do” leadership when a hybrid presence is made relevant to the interaction and when this presence provides authoritative grounds for influencing others to achieve the group’s goals.

scholarly journals The Kinematics of Social Action: Visual Signals Provide Cues for What Interlocutors Do in Conversation

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (8) ◽  
pp. 996
Author(s):  
James P. Trujillo ◽  
Judith Holler
Keyword(s):  
Social Action ◽  
Motion Tracking ◽  
Time Window ◽  
Semantic Content ◽  
Visual Signals ◽  
Manual Annotation ◽  
Conversational Interaction ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Rapid Processing

During natural conversation, people must quickly understand the meaning of what the other speaker is saying. This concerns not just the semantic content of an utterance, but also the social action (i.e., what the utterance is doing—requesting information, offering, evaluating, checking mutual understanding, etc.) that the utterance is performing. The multimodal nature of human language raises the question of whether visual signals may contribute to the rapid processing of such social actions. However, while previous research has shown that how we move reveals the intentions underlying instrumental actions, we do not know whether the intentions underlying fine-grained social actions in conversation are also revealed in our bodily movements. Using a corpus of dyadic conversations combined with manual annotation and motion tracking, we analyzed the kinematics of the torso, head, and hands during the asking of questions. Manual annotation categorized these questions into six more fine-grained social action types (i.e., request for information, other-initiated repair, understanding check, stance or sentiment, self-directed, active participation). We demonstrate, for the first time, that the kinematics of the torso, head and hands differ between some of these different social action categories based on a 900 ms time window that captures movements starting slightly prior to or within 600 ms after utterance onset. These results provide novel insights into the extent to which our intentions shape the way that we move, and provide new avenues for understanding how this phenomenon may facilitate the fast communication of meaning in conversational interaction, social action, and conversation.

What scores from monologic speaking tests can(not) tell us about interactional competence

2021 ◽  
pp. 026553222110033
Author(s):  
Carsten Roever ◽  
Naoki Ikeda
Keyword(s):  
Management Skills ◽  
Interactional Competence ◽  
Speaking Proficiency ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Important Concern ◽  
Comprehensive Information ◽  
Quantitative Analyses ◽  
Toefl Ibt ◽  
Test Use ◽  
Lower Correlation

The overarching aim of the study is to explore the extent to which test takers’ performances on monologic speaking tasks provide information about their interactional competence. This is an important concern from a test use perspective, as stakeholders tend to consider test scores as providing comprehensive information about all aspects of L2 competence. One hundred and fifty test takers completed a TOEFL iBT speaking section consisting of six monologic tasks, measuring speaking proficiency, followed by a test of interactional competence with three monologues and three dialogues, measuring pragmalinguistic skills, the ability to recipient design extended discourse, and interactional management skills. Quantitative analyses showed a medium to high correlation between TOEFL iBT speaking scores and interactional scores of r = .76, though with a much lower correlation of r = .57 for the subsample most similar to a typical TOEFL population. There was a large amount of variation in interactional scores for test takers at the same TOEFL iBT speaking score level, and qualitative analyses demonstrated that test takers’ ability to recipient design their talk and format social actions appropriate to social roles and relationships was not well captured by speaking scores. We suggest potential improvements.

Storytelling in multiple contexts

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 297-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
K.K. Luke
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Multiple Contexts ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Single Instance ◽  
The Many ◽  
Favourite Topic

Since Sacks’ pioneering work in the 1970s, storytelling has become a favourite topic of research within conversation analysis. Scholars have examined storytelling from the point of view of sequential organization (Jefferson 1978), participation organization (Goodwin 1984), story co-telling (Duranti 1986, Mandelbaum 1987, Lerner 1992), displays of epistemic statuses (Schegloff 1988), and action formation (M. Goodwin 1982, 1990; Mandelbaum 1993; Beach 2000; Beach & Glenn 2011; Wu 2011, 2012). Work has also been done on the management of storytelling in the context of other, concurrent activities (Goodwin 1984, Goodwin & Goodwin 1992, Mandelbaum 2010, Haddington et al. 2014). The aim of this paper is to apply the many insights that researchers have accumulated since Sacks to the analysis and understanding of a single instance of storytelling in a Cantonese conversation. A detailed, step-by-step unpacking of this story will reveal how the contingencies of an interaction, including the interplay of multiple contexts, may leave fine-grained imprints on the shape and character of a story.

scholarly journals Distinguishing coercion and underspecification in Type Composition Logic

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 71-87
Author(s):  
Julia Lukassek ◽  
Alexandra Anna Spalek
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Lexical Semantics ◽  
Additional Mechanism ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Change Of State ◽  
Type Composition ◽  
The Way

This paper investigates the meaning adaptability of change of state (CoS) verbs. Itargues that both coercion and underspecification are necessary mechanisms in order to properlyaccount for the semantic adaptability observable for CoS verbs in combination with theircomplements. This type of meaning adaptability has received little formal attention to date,although some recent work has already led the way on this topic (Spalek, 2014; Lukassek andSpalek, 2016; Asher et al., 2017). Our paper is part of a cross-linguistic case study of Germaneinfrieren and Spanish congelar (‘freeze’). We model the meaning adaptability of this test casewithin Type Composition Logic (TCL) (Asher, 2011). We build on Asher’s coercion mechanismand introduce an additional mechanism for underspecification that exploits the fine-grained typesystem in TCL.Keywords: lexical semantics, change of state verbs, coercion, underspecification, Type CompositionLogic.

Emergence of Proactive Self-Initiated Self-Repair as an Indicator of L2 IC Development

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 901-921 ◽  
Author(s):  
Du Re Kim
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Oral Proficiency ◽  
Fine Tuning ◽  
Interactional Competence ◽  
Potential Problems ◽  
Self Repair

Abstract This article finds empirical evidence of second language (L2) interactional competence (IC) and its development by focusing on one of the interactional practices: self-repairing. Compared to prior repair IC studies which mainly have explored how L2 speakers deal with evident L2-related troubles in conversation, this study focuses on cases in which they deploy self-repair when there are no such linguistic problems in previous talk, taking Mauranen’s (2006) dichotomy between retroactive and proactive self-repairs. After analyzing the conversation by L2 speakers with different oral proficiency, this study discovers whereas novice and intermediate speakers self-repair for correcting what is lexically or grammatically problematic, advanced speakers deploy self-repair mostly for pre-empting possible misunderstandings. Advanced speakers replace the previous items into words that are specific in the meaning range by fine-tuning the level of ‘granularity’ (Schegloff 2000) to avoid ambiguity and further other-initiated repair. The findings suggest that the development of L2 IC involves speakers’ ability to detect potential problems in the eyes of the recipients and replace them in advance.

Internationalization in the Higher Education Classroom: Local Policy Goals Put Into Practice

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 317-333 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hedda Söderlundh
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Local Learning ◽  
Local Policy ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Student Centered ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Do So

Nowadays, most universities have policies for internationalization, and in such policies, attention is increasingly given to internationalization as an aspect of students’ learning. However, there have so far been limited efforts to study how such student-centered internationalization can be carried out in practice. This article explores linkages between policy and practice, and it reports on a case study of how local policy goals of internationalization are carried out at the classroom level in a university in Sweden. Through fine-grained analyses of classroom interactions, it is demonstrated how a teacher and his students put policy goals into practice and what aspects stimulate them to do so. More generally, the results contribute to knowledge of how internationalization of higher education can be encouraged and practiced in local learning settings in the form of social actions and how it is carried out in a certain context at a certain time.

The sequential organization of text and speech in multimodal synchronous computer-mediated communication

2017 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanh thi Nguyen
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Time Lag ◽  
Time Lags ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Social Actions ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Computer Mediated ◽  
Teaching Episode ◽  
Slow Speech

AbstractThis study uses conversation analysis to describe the sequential and functional relationship between text and speech turns in an English conversational lesson conducted in multimodal synchronous computer-mediated communication (SCMC) involving text and speech modes. Focusing on repair sequences, I examine the relative timing of turns in each mode, the interactional practices that participants employed to handle timing discrepancy, and how both modes were utilized to maintain the pedagogical and interpersonal purposes of the encounter. The analysis shows that synchronous timing between text and speech turns was rare. In time lags between text and speech turns, if the repair was a self-initiated other-repair initiated by the tutee, speech turns did not seem to orient to the time lag. In other types of repair, the tutor utilized a range of practices to accommodate for the time lags, such as extreme slow speech tempo, pivot turns, and topic pursuits. The tutor also used the silent and visual features of text to insert and project an upcoming teaching episode in the midst of unfolding topical talk. The findings suggest that multimodal SCMC is a holistic process in which the affordances of modes can be employed dynamically and integratively to achieve social actions.

Prosodic features of bad news and good news in conversation

1998 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 195-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Freese ◽  
Douglas W. Maynard
Keyword(s):  
Conversation Analysis ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
Bad News ◽  
Good News ◽  
Prosodic Features ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
Sequential Organization ◽  
Ordinary Conversation

ABSTRACTRecent work suggests the importance of integrating prosodic research with research on the sequential organization of ordinary conversation. This paper examines how interactants use prosody as a resource in the joint accomplishment of delivered news as good or bad. Analysis of approximately 100 naturally occurring conversational news deliveries reveals that both good and bad news are presented and received with characteristic prosodic features that are consistent with expression of joy and sorrow, respectively, as described in the existing literature on prosody. These prosodic features are systematically deployed in each of the four turns of the prototypical news delivery sequence. Proposals and ratifications of the valence of a delivery are often made prosodically in the initial turns of the prototypical four-turn news delivery, while lexical assessments of news are often made later. When prosody is used to propose the valence of an item of news, subsequent lexical assessments tend to be alignments with these earlier ascriptions of valence, rather than independent appraisals of the news. (Bad news, good news, conversation analysis, prosody, sequencing).

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document