Toward a learning behavior tracking methodology for CA-for-SLA
Numa Markee
Associate Professor
DEIL, UIUC
4PM, Thursday, Nov. 16
Lucy Ellis Lounge
This paper is about methodology. After summarizing five issues in the
emerging research agenda of conversation analysis-for-second language
acquisition (CA-for-SLA), it develops empirically-based analyses of
classroom talk that occurs over several days and months to illustrate
how a macrolongitudinal learning behavior tracking (LBT) methodology for
CA-for-SLA works. LBT has two components: Learning object tracking
(LOT) and learning process tracking (LPT). LOT involves tracking every
time participants deploy a potential learning object within a single
speech event and in subsequent speech events. And LPT involves carrying
out conversation analyses of members' emerging grammar to understand how
members observably orient to learning objects that occur in a series of
speech events as a resource for doing language learning behaviors that
occur both in the moment and over time. The paper concludes with an
overview of the advantages and disadvantages of LBT, and shows how the
native, data-first, theory-second approach to CA-for-SLA illustrated
here connects with and respecifies issues in mainstream SLA and
sociocultural theory.