A Conversation Analysis Of Peer-Peer Interaction In English L2Classroom:the Sociocultural Theory Perspective

In the field of SLA research, interaction has captured increasingly wider attention among researchers. Much research has looked at interaction from a cognitive perspective in the past three decades. Furthermore, most of these studies have focused on teacher-student interaction while the importance of peer-peer interaction has not been equally acknowledged. The emergence of sociocultural theory provides SLA researchers a new perspective to understand and explain language acquisition. The fundamental tenet of sociocultural theory is that human cognitive functions originate from social interaction, where individuals, with language as a mediating tool jointly construct knowledge, which is subsequently become the individuals’own possessions through internalization. In addition, this theory prioritizes microgenetic approach and emphasizes emic perspective to understand interactive events, which is considered to have affinities with the essence and principles of conversation analysis (CA) approach. Therefore, the present study, as a combination of CA and sociocultural theory, aims to explore the ways students use talk to jointly make meaning in second language classroom and how this co-construction process results in cognitive change among and within individuals. Based on the analysis of the audio recordings from two classrooms of peer-peer interaction, the study yields the following findings:1. When peers have collaborative dialogues about language form, several devices are used to ensure the language building and problem solving:they explicitly or implicitly ask for help from their partners when necessary; they can correct each others’ errors by recast, direct correction, elicitation; other devices such as completing an undone utterance, offering a better solution, engaging in metalinguistic talk can also be found in their dialogue.2. During the co-construction of language content, several communicative strategies are deployed by the peers when they engage in the discussion:invitation for more ideas and offering help to peers; repetition to serve two functions—request for verification of the facts and to show disagreement; refinement:peers refine the ideas proposed by their partners by correcting or altering part of the utterance, making supplements of the proposal, or orienting the discussion to another sub-topic or a better solution with the previous one as a "resource"; elicitation:in the interaction, peers give prompts to their partners in order to elicit a right or reasonable answer.3. It is found that in collaborative dialogues, whether about language form or about topical content, rather than occurring in isolation, the strategies depicted above were often used in combination during the interaction.4. Mutual scaffolding or collective scaffolding is a notable feature in the data, that is, their roles as "scaffolders" and "scaffoldees" are shifted in the process and they rely on each other to achieve a level of performance that is above their individual level of competence. In other words, they co-construct their knowledge in this way.5. The assistance given was according to the assessment of the ZPD of the other part, which is embodied in the contingent talk.6. The interlocutors’ cognition about certain language forms and topics has been developed during the peer-peer interaction, which is manifested in the dialogue.