The Organisation of Language Classroom Interaction

In Chapters 3 and 4 I portrayed the organisation of turn, sequence and repair in different L2 classroom contexts. In this chapter the perspective broadens as I describe the overall organisation of L2 classroom interaction. I introduce the concept of the rational design of institutional interaction and identify the institutional goal as well as three interactional properties which derive directly from the goal. I then identify the basic sequence organisation of L2 classroom interaction as well as an emic methodology for its analysis. Next I exemplify how the institution of the L2 classroom is talked in and out of being by participants. The concept of the L2 classroom context, which was introduced in Chapters 3 and 4, is then problematised and located in a broader, tri-dimensional perspective on context. Finally I show how teachers create L2 classroom contexts and how they shift from one context to another. In this chapter the interactional architecture of the L2 classroom is portrayed as an example of the rational design of institutional interaction, balancing invariant underlying institutional characteristics with extreme flexibility and variability. CA attempts to understand the organisation of the interaction as being rationally derived from the core institutional goal. Levinson sees the structural elements of institutional discourse as