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Using conversation analysis, this chapter explores EFL trainee teachers’ orientations to students’ displays of non-understanding in instructiongiving sequences. The analyses draw on sequential organization of talk as well as on various multi-semiotic resources the participants deploy including orientations to classroom artefacts (e.g. interactive whiteboards). The research utilizes transcriptions of 13 (classroom) hours of video- recordings of 13 diff erent EFL teachers’ classes. The data were collected over a semester in 2013 in a public secondary school in Turkey. The fi ndings show that students’ displays of non-understanding (e.g. through statements like ‘we did not understand’ or by initiating requests for clarifi cation) in instruction- giving sequences are important sites for teachers to ensure clarity, as understanding of these instructions by the students is crucial for task accomplishment. Based on a collection of cases, we demonstrate that teachers may turn displays of non-understanding into understanding by using resources such as multimodal explanations and modelling. However, the majority of cases in instruction-giving sequences include teachers’ lack of or limited orientations to students’ non-understanding. We argue that management of non-understanding in such sequences should be integrated into teacher education curricula in both content and language classrooms, as it plays an important role in ensuring task accomplishment.