Divergent language choices and maintenance of intersubjectivity: the case of Danish EFL young learners

ABSTRACT

The role of students’ first language(s) in foreign language classrooms has been hotly debated in the last decades. Although this line of research has advanced our understanding of language choice in the L2 classroom, it has mostly dealt with adolescent and adult learners. From a contextual perspective, then, more micro-analytic research that focuses on language choice at the primary school level is needed. Against this background, this paper presents a case study of a Danish third-grade English as a foreign language classroom, in which a pattern of divergent language choices has been observed: the teacher consistently uses English, whereas the learners almost exclusively speak Danish, which might entail trouble in maintaining intersubjectivity and a joint pedagogical focus. Using Conversation Analysis methodology, we found two sequential formats that help ensure student understanding and thus maintain intersubjectivity: (1) learner translations and reformulations for peer support in expansion sequences, and (2) expansions initiated by students requesting information or clarification that display partial or no understanding. We argue that the sense-making practices co-constructed in this classroom context are possible because the teacher encourages shared multilingual meaning-making practices. This research has implications for teaching EFL to young learners, and classroom language policies.

KEYWORDS:

• Young learners
• EFL classroom discourse
• divergent language choices
• intersubjectivity
• Conversation Analysis

Acknowledgements

We thank Silvia Kunitz and Søren Wind Eskildsen as well as two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on an earlier version of this article. Maria Vanessa aus der Wieschen would like to thank the members of the HUMAN Research Centre at Hacettepe University for welcoming her as a visiting researcher.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maria Vanessa aus der Wieschen is currently employed at the University of Southern Denmark in Sønderborg. Her recent PhD thesis is a longitudinal investigation of the role of age and school factors in foreign language learning, drawing on quantitative methods, ethnography, and Conversation Analysis. Her research interests include Conversation Analysis as well as user-centered and participatory design for language learning.

Olcay Sert is the editor of Classroom Discourse (Routledge), and is the author of Social Interaction and L2 Classroom Discourse, published by the Edinburgh University Press in 2015. His main research approach is conversation analysis, and his research deals primarily with classroom discourse, L2 interactional competence and L2 teacher education.

Notes

1 IMDAT stands for (I)ntroducing CIC,(M)icro-teaching,(D)ialogic reflection,(A)nother round of teaching,(T)eacher collaboration and critical reflection.

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by a grant by the Danish Council for Independent Research | Culture and Communication (grant number DFF 4001 00046).