Study On Turn-taking Features Of Non-English Major College Students In Classroom Peer Conversational Interaction

The research on turn-taking is the center of conversation analysis.The knowledge of turn-taking is an essential component of interactional competence as well as an important aspect of conversation techniques,enabling one to start and remain involved in a conversation.As one of the notable features of conversation,turn-taking has been studied for quite a long time.However,in terms of classroom conversational interaction,most of these studies have been focused on teacher-student interaction,especially on the "teacher talk",while the importance of peer interaction is not equally acknowledged.So the present article approaches talk in classroom from conversation analysis,exploring the turn-taking features of students' conversational interaction in classroom conversation.To achieve this goal,the spoken performance in a classroom pair discussion was examined by using CA techniques.The participants of the study are 44 sophomores majoring in ACCA from Guangxi University of Finance and Economics.They are divided into pairs and their conversational interactions in classroom are recorded and then transcribed.Based on the qualitative analysis of the transcribed recording data in classroom peer interaction,the study yields the following findings:With regard to the turn-taking behavior,most students generally take fairly short and simple turns,and adopt a mechanical turn-taking sequence.With regard to the speaker rights,both the verbal and nonverbal strategies adopted by the students are analyzed.The students normally make use of self selection,such as insertion,overlap,interruption and other-selection,like questions to seize the speaking floor.In students' turn-taking behaviors,the most prominent feature is that questions are very frequently used by the students in the exchange of speaker rights;and insertions are used quite frequently because it is the most natural and harmonious way to seize the turn;overlaps are used quite infrequently and interruption are seldom used in students,pair discussion;As for non-verbal strategies,it is well noticed that students normally performed smile and head nodding in taking the floor,which express their agreement or compliant with others.With regard to listener response,the students generally use backchannels as four functions:acknowledgment,agreement,continuer and newsmark.The most frequently performed backchannel cues are "yes" "yeah".But three out of 30 pairs are almost without any backchannel response,which results in monologues and represents a low-interactive communication.In general,the students' peer conversational interaction displays a relatively low performance rate of listener response.Summarizing,the findings of the present study extend our current understanding of turn-taking and give some insights on oral English teaching.