Evidence-based reflections on interactional skills: The students' perspective

This ethnomethodological and conversation-analytic paper explores how college-level, second-semester students of L2 Spanish analyze, self-assess, and reflect on recordings of their interactions. With these interactions, the students implemented teacher-assigned oral tasks that were graded by the teacher with a focus on the students' interactional competence (IC), which was one of the instructional targets of the course. Specifically, the present dataset consists of 32 recordings and 32 reflections produced by 16 participants.

The analysis will take into account: the task sequence designed by the teacher to teach specific interactional practices and assess the learning of such practices; the students' teacher-assigned interactions that took place before and after the students received instruction; and the students' reflections on these interactions. This triangulation of data is prompted by an increasing interest for: (a) the development of L2 IC, be it instructed or not (Pekarek Doehler & Pochon Berger, 2015); (b) the design, implementation, and effectiveness of IC-based instruction (Barraja-Rohan, 2011; Huth & Taleghani-Nikazm, 2006; Kunitz & Yeh, in preparation); and (c) the members' (i.e., teachers' and students') perspective on L2 IC. Preliminary findings suggest that the students developed their L2 IC and became more specific in their reflections, which indicates their increased awareness of what constitutes IC. At the same time, the analysis illustrates the potential impact of instruction on the formulation of the students’ reflections and therefore the potential effect of the teacher’s IC beliefs on the students’ own beliefs.