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We learn languages in and through interaction. Given the central role of interaction in learning (and teaching), analysis of interaction has become an object of scientific inquiry since the earliest days of second/additional language (L2) learning and teaching research. Analysis of interaction has also become a source and drive for methodological innovation. In this chapter, I unpack the components, contexts, and dimensions of interaction within the broader field of L2 learning and teaching. The review of previous research presented in this chapter shows that the analysis of interaction paves the way to the broadening of knowledge about interaction that extends beyond the domain of oral communication skills, as the study of interaction is a gateway to understanding broader processes involved in language learning and teaching. The depth and quality of the analysis of the interaction between learners or between teachers and learners offer valuable insights into the learning of formal aspects of language and the development of a set of competencies (e.g., interactional competence) in L2. Going beyond language learning, the analysis of interaction during teaching also offers insights into teaching methodologies and curriculum, with implications for a wide spectrum of areas in applied linguistics.

This chapter introduces the most prominent lines of conversation analysis (CA) research on face-to-face interaction in second language classrooms. The first part of the chapter focuses on teacher-student interaction and illustrates examples of classroom interactional competence; that is, the ability to maximize learning opportunities (e.g., by asking follow-up questions, opening up slots for self-correction). The second part focuses on student-student interactions and shows how students interpret and observably implement class assignments. The analysis of student-student interactions also highlights the students’ interactional competence; that is, their ability to accomplish social actions (e.g., proposing an idea and dis/agreeing) with the semiotic resources at their disposal. Overall, the chapter presents CA as a powerful tool for describing how teachers and students achieve the institutional goals of teaching and learning through interaction. © 2026 selection and editorial matter, Matthew Burdelski and Tim Greer; individual chapters, the contributors.

This paper presents a synthesis of studies that adopted Conversation Analysis (CA) to investigate L2 teaching. In our review, we have organized the studies in two broader categories depending on their research focus: teacher-learner interaction in the classroom and language teacher education. Our review of earlier research shows that either used alone or in combination with other methodologies, CA provides invaluable affordances for the analysis of L2 teaching practices in in-person, online, and hybrid educational contexts, as well as in language teacher education. Finally, we showcase how CA is used to explore aspects of language teaching, with a focus on teachers’ embodied vocabulary explanations in an English as a second language classroom in Sweden. Our empirical case depicts how a CA analysis can illustrate the intricate multimodal and sequential dynamics of teaching and learning that would go unnoticed without the affordances of the CA methodological toolset.

This study deals with L2 interactional competence (L2 IC) and its assessment in pair and group test interactions. When developing and using rubrics for the assessment of L2 IC, language testers and raters face the issue of having to assign separate scores to what is essentially a jointly constructed examinee performance. Driven by conversation analysis as a method for analysing social actions, recent advances in the field have shown that a solution to the problem may lie in a thick description of the various L2 interactional practices and resources that examinees draw on when performing social actions in alternative ways. We contribute to this endeavour by investigating how examinees accomplish the social action of disagreeing with their partners' preceding turn. To do so, we draw on multimodal transcriptions of 66 video-recorded pair and group EFL oral proficiency tests conducted in a higher education setting in Czechia. Employing multimodal conversation analysis, we investigate the sequential unfolding of disagreements and demonstrate that they can be classified into three distinct types based on the semiotic (verbal, prosodic, temporal, embodied) resources employed to both signal and mitigate the incoming dissent. We argue that the design of disagreements constitutes rich ground for examining a learner's active listenership, and hence their L2 IC. Such findings have implications for rater training, construction of assessment rubrics, design of L2 discussion tasks as well as for the teaching of L2 IC in general.

This article addresses the need to better understand interactional asymmetries, challenges, and solutions in implementing synchronous hybrid language teaching. We investigate video-recorded peer interactions in a higher education language teaching context in which a student uses a telepresence robot, a remotely moveable videoconferencing tool, to participate in small-group task work in L2 English together with students who are physically located in the language classroom. Drawing on multimodal conversation analysis, we examine how the geographically dispersed peer group achieves, maintains, and repairs their joint attention on task-relevant learning materials as they are accomplishing a task, and how this kind of referential interactional work enables their co-operation as a group. Based on the analysis, we argue that in synchronous hybrid learning there is a need to reflexively adjust interactional practices to secure an intersubjective understanding of learning tasks and their progressivity. The findings also suggest that sensory and interactional asymmetries should be taken into account when developing and implementing synchronous hybrid learning environments that aim at equality of opportunities regardless of the participation mode.

Telecollaboration in pre-service teacher education promotes intercultural communicative competence and bridges knowledge and practice. Although a growing body of studies has addressed the affordances of telecollaboration for developing student-teachers' (STs') competencies, research focusing on their knowledge of classroom interaction—and on multimodal aspects of classroom interaction in particular—is scarce. Using multimodal conversation analysis (MCA), we address this research gap by investigating the affordances of telecollaboration between STs in Sweden and Japan to notice multimodal aspects of language classroom interaction. The study comes from a “parallel-course project” that aimed to design and conduct telecollaborative tasks within the context of two pre-service English language teacher education courses in Sweden and Japan. The participants (N = 12) met online and worked on video-based tasks using authentic classroom videos. They were grouped to conduct four online sessions (202 min of screen recordings) for analyzing classroom videos and transcriptions. Using MCA, a collection of 51 cases where STs notice and discuss multimodal aspects of teaching was compiled. The findings show that this telecollaboration allowed the STs to notice multimodal aspects of language classroom interaction, including teachers' gestures, gaze, and facial expressions in Japanese and European contexts. We demonstrate that the tasks facilitate collaborative noticing, enactment, and functional description of pedagogical gestures. The tasks also allowed the STs to discuss similarities and differences between the pedagogical cultures, contributing to their awareness of classroom interactional competence. Our study addresses a methodological gap in telecollaboration research by employing MCA. Implications for telecollaboration and curricula in language teacher education, as well as for using conversation analysis as a research methodology, will be given.

Reconceptualizing intervention and change in conversation analytic perspectives, this volume not only illustrates actual, rather than imagined, ways of conducting CA-informed interventions in a variety of teacher-training contexts around the globe but also documents the impact of such interventions on teacher development.

-Reconceptualizes intervention and change in conversation analytic terms

-Offers the first book-length documentation of tangible impact of conversation analysis on language teacher education

Showcases actual ways of implementing conversation analysis in teacher-training contexts from around the world

Recent research underscores the significance of data-led and collaborative reflection in enhancing teaching practices and professional development of teachers. While video-based reflections have been extensively studied, the potential of corpus-based methods remains underexplored. We address this gap in two ways. Firstly, we describe a research and development project in which we employed a corpus linguistic tool to analyse and reflect on our own lectures, with the ulterior aim of promoting a corpus-based reflective practice (CBRP) model that would help other teachers do the same. Secondly, we introduce collaborative micro auto-ethnography (CMAE) to illustrate how our model can facilitate the noticing of different aspects of teacher talk and lead to, what we call, snowball reflections (i.e., a sequence of reflective talk that extends a topic and spreads from one participant to the next). Our approach shows that corpus analysis, coupled with collaborative reflections, has the potential to not only enhance language use but also stimulate broader and deeper pedagogical discussions on and insights into teaching styles and student engagement, going beyond analyses of single words and lexico-grammatical patterns in teacher talk. We argue that there should be institutional support for developing new corpus-based professional development initiatives and that researchers can benefit from using ethnographic data together with detailed analyses of interactions.

This article presents a case study of a student-teacher’s change in classroom interactional practices as she engages in video-enhanced reflections and collaborative feedback encounters during her practicum in Sweden. We specifically focus on an interactional practice that can be observed in many classrooms: teachers’ use of (overt) negative evaluation (i.e. ‘No!’) that immediately follows learners’ incorrect answers. Using discursive timeline analysis (DTA), which is a combination of Conversation Analysis and Interactional Ethnography, we track the use of the focal interactional phenomenon across (1) video-recorded classroom interactions, (2) audio-recorded triadic post observation conferences, (3) student-teacher portfolios, and (4) interviews. We demonstrate that after getting video-based feedback with a video-tagging tool (i.e. VEO) and reflecting on her overuse of (overt) negative evaluation, the focal student-teacher avoids this interactional practice in her future teaching. As the analysis illustrates, this change of practice is possible thanks to data-led reflections and the evidence-based feedback that the student-teacher received. Our analysis therefore shows that reflection and feedback with a mobile video-tagging tool can facilitate increased awareness of classroom interactional practices. We argue that digitally enhanced, video-based reflections can promote teacher-learning in teacher education programmes and that using discursive timeline analysis can provide rich insights into these processes.