An Experimental Study On The Improvement Of Classroom Interactional Competence Of College English Learners

Interaction is the paramount part of L2/foreign language learning and it is indispensable in language teaching.Students’ interactional competence(henceforth IC)can be improved via effective interaction and training.Conversation analysis(henceforth CA)can explore the process of students’ interaction in detail,thus transforming the IC into different targets.This study examines the feasibility and effectiveness of CA concepts training in the college English classroom to improve learners’ IC.It refers to CA concepts of Barraja-Rohan(2011)and Mc Carthy(2003),namely,short response tokens,assessments and adjacency pairs.Also,they are three classroom interactional resources.Three research questions are answered:(1)Does CA concepts training affect students’ engagement level?(2)Does the training affect students’ idea sharing?(3)Does the training affect students’ reciprocal feedback?91 participants are selected from four classes in a technical university.They are randomly divided into two experimental and two control classes.This experiment lasts one term.Six teaching video clips related to the content of textbook are selected.Three CA concepts are trained in experimental classes in the manner of snowball.Additionally,pretest and posttest are conducted in four classes.First,it is found that CA concepts training affects students’ engagement level,which can be displayed by increasing average turn length of short response tokens and adjacency pairs.But there is no significant difference on average turn length of assessments.Second,it is found that CA concepts training affects students’ idea sharing,which can be illustrated by the positive effect on using adjacency pairs.Third,it is found that CA concepts training affects students’ reciprocal feedback,which can be demonstrated by the positive effect on using short response tokens and assessments.Therefore,CA concepts used as the training content of teaching could improve classroom IC of college English learners to some degree.In the course of group interaction,peer feedback is of great significance.Short response tokens and positive assessments from the partner are beneficial to the continuity of conversations.Additionally,the study just pays heeds to the development of students’ group IC,which is a cut-in point in future studies for further conducting relevant research of individuals’ IC.