Conversation as a tool for professional practice

• Steven Bloch (Associate Professor of Language & Cognition, University College London, UK)

Making a difference
In this presentation we will look at how conversation analysis can be used to inform clinical assessment and intervention for people living with Parkinson’s.

Adults living with communication disorders have traditionally been ‘medicalised’: assessed diagnosed, and treated as patients within a medical framework. For many of these people, their families and the professionals who support them, such an approach works insofar as it fits within a standard health service. However, the effects of most communication disorders are multifactorial, long term and far reaching; potentially benefitting from a more interactive-social approach. This has particular value for client groups who do not respond well to ‘curative’ treatments.

In this session we will look at the development and application of Better Conversations with Dysarthria: Parkinson’s – a new intervention programme informed by applied CA principles.  The case of Nick and Dot will be presented: featuring a man with Parkinson’s whom, according to his wife ‘doesn’t seem very interested anymore’. We will examine this statement in terms of next turn uptake and what it might mean to be ‘doing showing interest’ in conversation. Pre and post therapy data will be used to show the preliminary effects of a CA informed approach for people living with Parkinson’s and how this work might inform future clinical work.

Better Conversations with Dysarthria - Parkinson’s (BCP-D) is currently undergoing a feasibility evaluation funded by Parkinson’s UK.

Further details of this case can be found in: Bloch, S. and Beeke S. (forthcoming) A Better Conversations approach for people living with dysarthria, in Walshe, M. and Miller, N. (eds) Clinical Cases in Acquired Dysarthria, Routledge 

How different teacher roles become visible in classroom interaction practices.
Studying authentic educational interactions is of importance because of the insights into the actual practices teachers and students deploy in organizing these interactions. Conversation analysis provides us with the tools to concentrate on the norms participants observably orient to instead of on observer’s preconceptions. Especially in an educational context in which the core business directly relates to student’s cognition, we see it as a challenge to eliminate the cognitive perspective on student’s knowledge and development. Instead, our aim is to portray the observable conditions for the development of knowledge and understanding by studying the actual practices teacher and students use to ‘produce’ education.

In this presentation, I will focus on teacher practices within different classroom activities. The interactional practices of the teacher will be linked to participation frameworks (Koole & Berenst, 2008) and teacher roles. It will be shown that in the activities in which the triadic structure of Initiation-Response-Evaluation (IRE) sequences (Cazden, 1988; Mehan, 1979; Sinclair & Coulthard, 1975) plays a role, the teacher’s role can be defined as instructor. In whole-classroom activities that offer more room for participation of the students, it will be illustrated that teachers also employ roles that can be described as interlocutor or intermediate.

The different activities, participation frameworks and teacher roles will be illustrated on the basis of work done by our Language and Social Interaction group from the University of Groningen. I will show teacher conduct as displayed in: a) whole-classroom interactions during shared reading at kindergarten (Gosen, 2012), b) classroom discussions during history and geography lessons at upper primary school (Willemsen, 2019) and c) student-teacher interactions in mathematic lessons at secondary school (Breukelman et al, in preparation).  

With the analyses, it will be stressed once more that conversation analytic research is crucial for the insights in the professional practice of the classroom. By illuminating concrete details that establish the interactional environment of these educational activities, it becomes clear which practices might be beneficial for student’s development. If teachers could become conscious of their interactional repertoire and its consequences for the ensuing interaction, this is expected to benefit educational outcomes.

References:

Breukelman, Gosen, Koole, Van de Pol (in preparation). Interactional and pedagogical norms in student-teacher interactions.

Cazden, C. B. (1988). Classroom discourse: The language of teaching and learning (1st ed.). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann educational books, inc.

Gosen, M.N. (2012). Tracing learning in interaction: An analysis of shared reading of picture books at kindergarten. University of Groningen, Groningen.

Koole, T., & Berenst, J. (2008). Pupil participation in plenary interaction. In J. Deen, M. Hajer, & T. Koole (Eds.), Interaction in two multicultural mathematics classrooms: Mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion (pp. 107–139). Amsterdam: Aksant Academic Publishers.

Mehan, H. (1979). ‘What time is it, Denise?’: Asking known information questions in classroom discourse. Theory Into Practice, 18(4), 285–294.

Sinclair, J. M., & Coulthard, M. (1975). Towards an analysis of discourse: The English used by teachers and pupils. London: Oxford University Press.

Willemsen, A. (2019). The floor is yours: A conversation analytic study of teachers’ conduct facilitating whole-class discussions around texts. University of Groningen, Groningen.

• Tom Koole (Professor of Language and Social interaction, Groningen University, Netherland)

This somewhat provocative Pink Floyd title refers to a phenomenon that we came across in a series of PhD studies of student-teacher and student-student interaction in primary and secondary schools in the Netherlands: students show a higher degree of language proficiency when they interact with each other than when interacting with the teacher. This was found with 12 to 13 year old students in the first grade of secondary schools (van Balen et al. submitted) as well as with 4 to 5 year olds in the Kindergarten stage of Dutch primary education (Hiddink 2019).

The data I will present are from primary school exploratory learning activities and from secondary school Dutch as L1 classes. I will lead you through 4 Groningen PhD studies (Frans Hiddink, Anke Herder, Maaike Pulles, Joke van Balen) two of which (Hiddink and van Balen) enabled us to compare peer interaction with student-teacher interaction while the other two (Herder and Pulles) showed students in peer interaction to be capable of levels of language proficiency that were far beyond the formal requirements for their age groups.

In this lecture, I will discuss language profiency from the perspective of interactional skills such as solving problems, discussing opinions, and collaboratively reading and writing texts. With this I hope to start a discussion with the audience on your views on how teaching can benefit from the idea that in order to increase the language production and proficiency of students they are better left alone.

This paper is a conversation analytic study of police investigative interviews, exploring how the suspect’s statement is transformed into a summarized police version of events. Such transformation takes place in several ways and at several stages of the interview. The analysis shows that as the suspect tells his version of events, this story is altered and shaped along the way through police officers’ reformulations and understanding checks, reported speech, and removing or negotiating over detail. This transformation happens in interaction, and thus in negotiation between police officers and suspects. The latter may respond to, challenge or accept the interviewing officer’s contributions and the ongoing construction of a particular version of events. In addition, I find that at the end of the interview when the suspect’s statement is summed up and/or written down in the interview record, the original interaction and with that, the suspect’s story, is transformed further. There is great variation across the data set as to for example the representation of the interviewer’s role, the use of direct and indirect speech, and the chronological order in which the statement is documented. Such features are relevant for readers’ perception of the suspect’s credibility and consistency, as well as for example of the extent to which the supposed crime would have been intentional or premeditated. The findings in this study contribute to knowledge about the way in which a suspect’s official statement is produced – and what implications that has for the evidential value of the interview record. Such knowledge is of great importance and relevance not only from a linguistic perspective, but also for police practice as well as for other judicial actors who are tasked with interpreting, assessing and evaluating interview records as evidence. Beyond this, I argue that the observed inconsistency and variation in interviewing practice is problematic in itself, both from a procedural point of view, and from a rule of law perspective.

Maria Njølstad Vonen

Despite the high stakes of the Norwegian oral exams, there exists very little empirical knowledge on them, compared to other assessment types, such as Norwegian written oral exams or international standardized speaking tests. This study examines the overall organization of subject conversations in oral exams by qualitatively analyzing video-recordings of real oral examinations. Using conversation analysis on 39 students’ oral examinations in Norwegian lower and upper secondary schools, this study shows that the subject conversations comprise four chronological phases; (1) opening/transition sequence, (2) follow-up on the student’s presentation, (3) questions covering different areas of the curriculum, and (4) finishing sequence. So far, the results reveal that the teachers in the first phase worked to make the exam setting comfortable and optimize students’ contributions by providing positive feedback and using humor and offering water. In the final phase, teachers attempted to secure that the students’ have displayed as much knowledge as possible by letting the external examiner pose questions and opening for the students to say what they want. Results from this study gives a research-based foundation for rater training, where reflection over practice might strengthen the teachers consciousness about the role as examiner and about consequences different interactional strategies have for the students opportunities to display competence.

Merve Bozbıyıks – University of Autonoma de Madrid

Globalization and policies of internalization have led universities across the world to adopt English as a medium of instruction (EMI) for design and organization of academic environments at local and global contexts (e.g., Dimova, Hultgren & Jensen, 2015). Also, there have been increasing numbers of studies investigating EMI from different perspectives such as effective teaching practices (e.g., Klaassen, 2001) or professional development of EMI lecturers (e.g., Hellekjær, Klaasen & Volcke, 2018). A few studies (e.g., Duran, Kurhila & Sert, 2019) have emphasized classroom practices in EMI universities. However, exploring multiple steps of task accomplishment seems terra incognita in the EMI research field. In this sense, the present study investigates how the participants (lecturer and undergraduate students) accomplish targeted course tasks during different online classrooms in a state EMI university in Turkey. For this purpose, the data (16-hour video recordings) was collected from online EMI classrooms in which the lecturers integrate collaborative group activities within multiple classroom modes of main sessions and breakout rooms. Using Conversation Analysis (CA) (Sacks, Schegloff, & Jefferson, 1974), the preliminary findings of this study reveal that the assigned online EMI classroom tasks are completed during multiple steps including (1) Lecturer talk, (2) Pre-task stage , (3) Peer/Group Task in Breakout Room Session, (4) Sharing Peer/Group Task in Main Session, and (5) Collaborative Task Accomplishment during Post-task stage. While doing this, the interlocutors display evidence-based account with references to diverse resources (e.g., lecturer’s previous talk, assigned readings, Powerpoint slides, lecturer idiolect). This study provides CA-based implications on the EMI research field thereby exploring EMI classroom practices during multiple steps of task accomplishment.

Keywords: Multiple Steps of Task Accomplishment, English Medium Instruction, Online Classroom Interaction, Multimodal Conversation Analysis

References

Dimova, S., Hultgren, A. K., & Jensen, C. (Eds.). (2015). English-medium instruction in European Higher Education. Berlin, Germany: De Gruyter Mouton.

Duran, D., Kurhila, S., & Sert, O. (2019). Word search sequences in teacher-student interaction in an English as medium of instruction context. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 1-20.

Hellekjær, G. O., Klaasen, R. G., & Volcke, J. (2018, June). Unpacking the EMI Lecture Genre: A look at the relationship between language quality, subject difficulty, effective lecturing behavior and subject comprehension. Paper presented at the NFEAP conference, Oslo.

Klaassen, R. G. (2001). The international university curriculum: Challenges in English-medium engineering education. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Delft University of Technology.

Sacks, H., E. A. Schegloff, and G. Jefferson, (1974), ‘A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation’, Language, 50(4): 696-735.

Kajsa P

CA has traditionally favoured the Jeffersonian transcription system and recommended analysts to work on languages in which they have “near-native” competence (e.g. Hepburn & Bolden 2017:131). Such recommendations may have unnecessarily limited the use of multilingual data in CA research in the past. Due to the extent and acceleration of globalization, however, we now see that a growing number of CA researchers work with data where participants use a second language and/or mix languages (e.g. Gardner & Wagner 2004, Filipi & Markee 2018). Yet, in the absence of widely accepted transcription conventions for multilingual data (compared to, e.g. the transcription of multimodal interaction; see Mondada 2014), researchers’ transcription practices vary considerably. This presentation seeks to explore how multilingual/L2 data may be represented as objectively as possible, while maintaining readability.

The oft-used mock phonetic spelling known as the ‘eye dialect’ has been widely criticised for its inconsistency, poor readability, and for stereotyping speakers (e.g. Bucholtz 2000, Haberland & Mortensen 2016, Ochs 1979). However, the International Phonetic Spelling (IPA) which has been suggested as a remedy (Bucholtz 2000) requires years of practice and can only be interpreted by trained phoneticians (Haberland & Mortensen 2016:586).

In order to avoid common problems related to understanding, analysing and transcribing multilingual/L2 data, this presentation suggests a triangular approach to transcription. The facets of the suggested approach are: participant orientation, analytic importance, and reader-friendliness. The presentation draws from multilingual/lingua franca data, showing examples of ambiguous segments and languaging, and suggesting ways to decipher sections which might otherwise be left unanalysed. A simpler alternative to IPA and certain slight modifications to standard orthography are also proposed for more accessible data representation.

References:

Bucholtz, M. 2000. The politics of transcription. Journal of Pragmatics 32, 1439–1465.

Filipi, A. and Markee, N. (Eds.) 2018. Conversation Analysis and Language Alternation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Gardner, R. and Wagner, J. (Eds.) 2004. Second Language Conversations. London: Continuum.

Haberland, H. and Mortensen, J. 2016. Transcription as second-order entextualization: The challenge of heteroglossia. In A. Capone and J.L. Mey (eds), Interdisciplinary Studies in Pragmatics, Culture and Society. Heidelberg: Springer, pp. 581–600.

Hepburn, A. and Bolden, G. B. 2017. Transcribing for Social Research. London: Sage.

Mondada, L. 2014. Conventions for multimodal transcription. Available at: https://mainly.sciencesconf.org/conference/mainly/pages/Mondada2013_conv_multimodality_copie.pdf

Ochs, E. 1979. Transcription as theory. In E. Ochs and B. Schieffelin (eds) Developmental Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, pp. 43–72.

Fabiola Stein, Helen Melander Bowden and Johanna Svahn

Department of Education, Uppsala University

This paper explores the emergence of pedagogical activities in the midst of professional work by focusing on ways in which professional vision (Goodwin, 1994) is displayed and calibrated in activities that revolve around inscriptions (Latour & Woolgar, 1986; Lynch, 1988) in everyday scientific laboratory research. The study is based on analyses of video recorded interactions at a Physical Chemistry university research program. In this context, the inscriptions handled by the researchers are graphic representations of quantitative measurements that demand not only the ability of seeing and categorizing visible phenomena, but also knowledge to analyze and make judgments about possible research problems or findings. Drawing on work on epistemics-in-interaction (Heritage, 2012) and the cooperative and transformative organization of human action and knowledge (Goodwin, 2007, 2013), we explore how novice researchers learn to analyze inscriptions in collaboration with more experienced peers in activities that are not primarily designed for teaching. By focusing on displays and demonstrations of understanding and the sequential unfolding of explanations, the results of the study show how the researchers are simultaneously engaged in producing assessments about properties of the measured chemical samples, while monitoring and distinguishing novices’ problems of understanding from actual research problems. In this way, the study expands the notion of professional vision beyond the viewing and categorization of phenomena to include the analytical work required to make sense of these same phenomena. Moreover, the sequential multimodal analysis makes evident epistemic challenges of situated apprenticeship by examining the management of epistemic relations and the construction of individual and shared understandings for producing relevant changes in the novice perception.

Key-words: workplace learning, professional vision, inscriptions, knowledge-in-interaction

Magdalena Solarek-Gliniewicz, MultiLing, University of Oslo

The patient-centred model of communication in the Norwegian healthcare system is often considered to be in opposition to the model of communication used in Polish healthcare (Vågan & Aasland, 2011; Zembala, 2015). In my talk, I will focus on (1) whether Polish physicians who moved to Norway use this patient-centred model of communication in their interaction with patients and (2) if their L2 abilities in Norwegian enable patients to actively participate in the consultation.

The data consists of 40 consultations between Norwegian speaking patients and Polish physicians with Norwegian as L2, videorecorded in six Norwegian hospitals in different parts of the country. First, I will present the criteria used for assessing whether consultations are patient centred. Then, I will share what 25 Polish physicians in Norway have reported in research interviews I conducted, on whether they see themselves as acquainted with this model of communication and whether they were offered any courses on patient-centred communication during consultations.

I will contrast the self-reported data with a presentation of excerpts from videorecorded consultations, where I point out the strategies Polish physicians use, both those favourable and unfavourable to a patient-centred way of communication. In my analysis I use the conversation analysis method and I pay special attention to how physicians practice shared decision making with their patients, express their empathy and how they use body-oriented gestures (Kendon, 2014; Gullberg, 1998) and gaze (Ruusuvuori, 2001).  The combination of factors mentioned above may contribute to a better understanding between doctors and patients when one of them speaks the language of the consultation as L2.  

I will conclude that it is important to acquire cultural and institutional competence, such as patient-centred approaches of communication, to enable fluid and successful communication between doctors and patients.

References:

Gullberg, M.  (1998). Gesture as a communication strategy in second language discourse: A study of learners of French and Swedish. Lund: Lund University Press.

Kendon, A. (2004). Gesture: Visible action as Utterance. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.

Ruusuvuori, J. (2001). Looking means listening: Coordinating displays of engagement in doctor-patient interaction. Soc Sci Med. 2001 Apr; 52(7): 1093-108. doi: 10.1016/S0277-9536(00)00227-6.

Vågan, A., Aasland, O. (2011). Legesentrert og pasientsentrert klinisk kommunikasjon blant leger utdannet før og etter Oslo96- reformen. Michael 2011; 8: 317-28.

Zembala, A. (2015). Modele komunikacyjne w relacjach lekarz-pacjent. Zeszyty naukowe Towarzystwa Doktorantów Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego. Nauki Ścisłe,11 (2)/ 2015, 35-50