Adopting a conversation analytic approach (Sacks et al., 1974), this study aims at explicating Thai undergraduate students’ task-based interaction (Samuda & Rounds, 1993; Seedhouse & Almutairi, 2009) in an online environment. The analysis unpacks the students’ talk-in-interaction concerning their organization of turn-taking, sequence and repair. The naturally-occurring data were collected from 49 non-English major students’ role-play task performance via Microsoft Teams which amount to approximately 6 hours of recording. From a fine-grained detail of Conversation Analysis (CA), the findings show that the same task design results in diverse ways of turn allocation, speaker selection, and sequence pattern during students’ actual interactional tendencies. Although the students’ speech-exchange system (turn type, turn order, turn size) is limited to some degree due to their low level of English proficiency and the nature of the task, the students are able to share meanings through co-construction of actions and employments of multiple modalities (Goodwin, 2000, 2013) including talk, gestures, and artifacts among their groups for the completion of the task within the time limit. The present study builds on the disparity between task-as-workplan and task-in-process (Breen, 1987, 1989; Dooly, 2011) and previous studies on task-based interaction. This study not only provides pedagogical implications for designing tasks that potentially promote interactional practices in a digital platform, but also shows how process-oriented and micro-detailed insights from CA work can inform Task-Based Learning and Teaching (TBLT) and Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC).

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Abstract Summary
Adopting a conversation analytic approach, this study aims at explicating Thai undergraduate students’ task-based interaction in an online environment. The analysis unpacks the students’ talk-in-interaction concerning their organization of turn-taking, sequence and repair. The naturally-occurring data were collected from 49 non-English major students’ role-play task performance via Microsoft Teams which amount to approximately 6 hours of recording. From a fine-grained detail of Conversation Analysis (CA), the findings show that the same task design results in diverse ways of turn allocation, speaker selection, and sequence pattern during students’ actual interactional tendencies. The present study builds on the disparity between task-as-workplan and task-in-process and previous studies on task-based interaction. This study not only provides pedagogical implications for designing tasks that potentially promote interactional practices in a digital platform, but also shows how process-oriented and micro-detailed insights from CA work can inform Task-Based Learning and Teaching and Computer-Mediated Communication.

Authors:
Sumita Supakorn, Thammasat University, Thailand

About the Presenter(s)
Dr Sumita Supakorn is a University Assistant Professor/Lecturer at Thammasat University in Thailand

See this presentation on the full schedule – Saturday Schedule

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