Interactional routines and the socialization of interactional style in adult learners of Japanese

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Journal of Pragmatics 31 (1999) 1493-1512 www.elsevier.nl/locate/pragma

Interactional routines and the socialization of interactional style in adult learners of Japanese Amy Snyder Ohta* Department of Asian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, Box 353521, Seattle, WA 98195, USA

Abstract Interactional routines are powerful in first language acquisition contexts, socializing children into appropriate norms of language use. This paper investigates the role of interactional routines in the socialization of L2 interactional competence via analysis of 15 hours of foreign language classroom data. Results reveal that active and peripheral participation in the routines of the classroom shapes learner ability to use the follow-up turn of the IRF routine to perform assessments and other expressions responsive to their interlocutor's utterances. Instances in which teachers explicitly guide learners in the expression of alignment are rare. In teacherfronted contexts, learners are guided to be responsive to teacher questions, and have little opportunity for expression of alignment, including assessments. Learner assessments, when they occur in teacher-fronted contexts, have particular sequential consequences, triggering extended assessment activity by the teacher. The teachers' language incorporates various follow-up turn expressions during interaction with students. Longitudinal analysis of learner language during pair-work reveals an increase in learner use of follow-up expressions, including assessments, evidencing the socializing power of both active and peripheral participation in the interactional routines of the classroom. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction This paper applies the concept of language socialization to foreign language classroom discourse, examining the role of interactional routines in the socialization of expression of alignment among beginning (first-year university-level) adult learners of Japanese as a foreign language. Because they are highly salient, interactional routines work powerfully to convey cultural knowledge through the language socialization of children acquiring their native languages, particularly when the expression of affect is involved (Peters and Boggs, 1986; Schieffelin and Ochs, * E-mail: [email protected] 0378-2166/99/$ - see front matter © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0378-2166(98)00115-5

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1986; Watson-Gegeo and Gegeo, 1986). This paper investigates how such routines impact adult foreign language learners. In particular, this paper examines how interactional routines function to socialize expression of alignment, and how this socialization occurs through learner participation in the routines prevalent in their classrooms. First, the role of interactional routines in first language acquisition will be discussed, with application of these ideas made to second language acquisition. Then, the role of two interactional routines will be investigated for their impact on the expression of alignment. The IRF (Initiation-Response-Follow-up) routine (Sinclair and Coulthard, 1975; Mehan, 1985), an interactional routine common to classroom discourse, is one of these (this routine will be explained in detail in section 3). In teacher-fronted discourse, learner participation is usually restricted to the response turn of the sequence; because of this, in classes where the IRF dominates the discourse, learners may not have the opportunity to more fully develop their communication skills, especially regarding expression of affect. While possible negative effects of the IRF on learners' developing interactional style have been discussed in the literature, the question of whether or not learners can productively apply the IRF has been neglected. We will examine the role of this routine both in teacher-fronted and in learner-learner discourse, to see how the routine functions in socialization of interactional style. The other routine to be analyzed is extended assessment activity (Goodwin and Goodwin, 1987), an interactional routine in which expression of affect is heightened when an assessment produced by one speaker is followed by an aligning assessment produced by another interlocutor. Video and audio-recorded data from 14 first-year university Japanese language classes were transcribed for analysis, and constitute the corpus for this study (Table 1). The corpus contains not only teacher-student interaction that occurred in teacherfronted classes, but also includes learner-learner interactive contexts. Table 1 The corpus Teacher and university

Data transcribed

Location of microphone and nature of data collected

Teacher A, univ. 1

Three 50 minute classes, one each from Fall, Winter and Spring quarters

Teacher B, univ. 1

Three 50 minute classes, one each from Fall, Winter and Spring quarters

Teachers A, B and C: Microphone and recorder on teacher's desk. Video camera recorded video and audio data. Microphones did not capture language used during pair or group work

Teacher C, univ. 2

Three classes, one each from Fall, Winter and Spring. Fall (120 min.), Winter and Spring quarters (50 min. each)

Teacher D, univ. 3

Five 50 minute classes, one from Fall quarter, two from Winter quarter, two from Spring quarter

Teacher D: Tie-clip mike clipped to the clothing of a student, Candace. Video camera recorded audio and video data.

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Analysis reveals that although learner expression of alignment is limited in teacher-fronted contexts, teachers may play a key role in reallocating turns so that students have opportunity to express alignment with their interlocutors, both in teacher-fronted and pair-work contexts. First, in teacher-fronted discourse we examine how assessments produced by students, whether spontaneously or explicitly guided by the teacher, result in the emergence of extended assessment activity, where focus on meaning results in salient use of markers of affect. Second, learner use of the IRF in pair-work contexts is considered. Analysis of the classroom language of Candace, a university student enrolled in first-year Japanese, reveals the power of classroom language in socializing the expression of alignment. The teacher's use of the follow-up turn of the IRF for assessments and other expressions of understanding and alignment over the academic year is explored. The impact of the teacher's routinized language use on Candace's development is evident - over the academic year, Candace's use of expressions of affect in Japanese increase in both variety and quantity. While early in the academic year such expressions in Japanese are completely absent, over time she begins to participate in the follow-up turn of the IRF in pair-work contexts, at first minimally. By the end of the year Candace ably she exploits the third turn of the sequence for the same range of affective functions her teacher does, including use of assessments to show alignment with her interlocutor. This work breaks new ground in second language acquisition research by tracking the pragmatic development of a foreign language learner over an academic year using naturalistic classroom data. The results provide evidence of the power of interactional routines in classroom second language acquisition contexts.

2. Interactional routines: What are they and how do they impact second language acquisition? Peters and Boggs (1986: 81) define an interactional routine as "a sequence of exchanges in which one speaker's utterance, accompanied by appropriate nonverbal behavior, calls forth one of a limited set of responses by one or more other participants". Interactional routines are meaningful culturally formulated modes of expression, which facilitate acquisition not only of language structures, but also of embedded cultural concepts. While interactional routines have a predictable structure, Peters and Boggs explain that they fall along a continuum of formulaicity. More formulaic routines have a particular, invariant content. Less formulaic routines vary widely in terms of content, but are predictable because the activity involved is consistent from routine to routine. In Japanese, routines with fixed content include sequences related to comings and goings such as ittekimasu, 'I'm going and returning', to which one's interlocutor responds itteirasshai, 'go and return', and routines involved in greetings, such as hajimemashite, 'how do you do' ~ hajimemashite. In L 1 acquisition, interactional routines have been found to work powerfully in transmitting linguistic and cultural "knowledge to children. Children learn interactional routines in stages, first by learning how to participate in a routine, and finally

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becoming expert in the entire routine (Peters and Boggs, 1986; Schieffelin and Ochs, 1986). Hall and Brooks (1995) have considered how interactional routines may function to socialize interactional style in foreign language learners, and have outlined how an interactional routine may be acquired in adult L2 acquisition contexts. Following this work, I propose that the sequence of acquisition of interactional routines for adults is similar to that of children; that adults participate at first peripherally, and then begin to take on a particular portion of the routine, with successful learners eventually becoming expert in all parts of the routine. This process may be summarized as follows: In order to acquire an interactional routine, participation is essential. At first, such participation may be peripheral. Limited peripheral participation (Lave and Wenger, 1991), where the novice is a ratified observer but not a primary participant, has been shown to be a key part of socialization processes. In learning a new routine, the adult learner, or novice, is at first an observer, or minimally participates in the routine. Scaffolding (Wood et al., 1976) allows the novice to progressively participate more actively. Through this process, the novice develops a basic understanding both of the function of the routine, as well as the resources needed to do the routine. Through repeated participation, the novice becomes able to anticipate how the routine is likely to unfold, and begins to participate more and more actively. The next step is expansion of participation in the routine to a wider variety of contexts, and with this broader participation comes understanding of the sociocultural importance of the roles played by different interlocutors, and the deeper meanings associated with the routine. Ultimately, the novice is able to use the routine more independently, finally expanding and transforming the routine and using it to meet individual goals. Through this process of social interaction which incorporates increasingly active participation by the novice, what was initially a routine used by others becomes a part of the novice's, the language learner's, own linguistic and cognitive repertoire (Vygotsky, 1978; Wertsch, 1985). I propose that this acquisition process applies to interactional routines learned in naturalistic settings as well as classrooms, and in first as well as second language acquisition contexts. In general, studies of the role of classroom language in the socialization of interactional routines have suggested that socialization into classroom norms of language use may result in learners acquiring routines that are not appropriate for use in communities where the target language is spoken (Ohta, 1994; Hall, 1995; Hall and Brooks, 1995). Despite a teacher's effort at fostering appropriate language use, the socioinstitutional context of the classroom also carries with it certain norms of communication which may work to socialize modes of expression that are more appropriate for use in classrooms than in the broader foreign language community. In particular, researchers examining the language of foreign and second language classrooms have noted that the IRF (Initiation - Response - Follow-up) routine may socialize students to participate in conversations in inappropriate ways. Consolo (1996) and Ohta (1993) found that in the teacher-fronted classes they examined, teacher use of the IRF limited student participation to the response turn of the three-turn sequence - to answering questions, or responding to teacher-initiated drill. In neither case did the learner have an opportunity for expression of alignment - this

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was reserved for the teacher. Ohta's (1997) case study findings, however, suggest that students may be able to use the IRF appropriately; one student, Becky, clearly distinguished between the 'teacher talk' of the IRF routine and appropriate conversational language in her own language use. It remains to be investigated whether the IRF structure, which provides a predictable context for the expression of alignment, may work to socialize expression of affect. The next section explores how this routine may function as a socializing tool, particularly how the IRF may provide a context for learners to express alignment with their interlocutors.

3. The role of the IRF routine in language socialization The IRF, a highly prevalent classroom routine, is a rich source of data for the examination of language socialization in the foreign language acquisition context. The IRF is defined by its structure, but the turns may have different functions, as shown in Table 2 below. The minimum IRF sequence contains an initiation and response turn, with an optional f o l l o w - u p turn. Table 2 Possible content of IRF routines Initiation turn

Response turn

Follow-up turn

1

question

answer

2

drillprompt

response

• • • •

indication of comprehension (minimal) indication of comprehension (extended) evaluation assessment

The initiation may be a question (whether referential or display), or a prompt to participate in a language drill. The follow-up turn provides the greatest variation. Its content depends upon the content of the response turn. Following drill or mechanical practice, a follow-up turn is likely to contain an evaluation (such as hai, ' y e s ' , or ii desu ne, 'good/well done'). When a referential question is used, the follow-up turn is more likely to include a follow-up comment responsive to the content of the preceding turn, rather than an evaluation of that response. The content of the IRF therefore varies widely, including use for teacher-fronted questioning of students on material learned, drilling of new material, introduction of vocabulary, or questions to the class or individual students on the current topic of interest. The follow-up turn allows for multiple expressive possibilities. Because these sequences occur in a classroom context, teacher production of an evaluation (for example ii desu ne, 'good') is always possible - in fact, this use of the follow-up turn for evaluation is a hallmark of teacher talk (Mehan, 1984). The follow-up turn, however, may also be used for an indication of comprehension (for example, the minimal m m or un, both meaning 'uh-huh', or the more extended aa soo desu ka, 'is that so'), or an assessment (for example omoshiroi desu ne: :, 'how interesting'), possibilities which

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would be appropriate in non-pedagogical contexts. The IRF is a routine low in formulaicity, due to its variable content. Its predictable structure and frequent occurrence allow beginning language learners to anticipate how classroom discourse is likely to unfold, contributing to the routine's socializing power. As stated earlier, research has shown that in teacher-fronted settings, student participation in the IRF is generally confined to the response turn - students participate much less often in initiation or follow-up turns in teacher-fronted settings. In the present corpus, this is also the case. Table 3 shows the percentage of initiation, response, and f o l l o w - u p turns occupied by students and teachers in the present corpus: Table 3 Student and teacher participation in the IRF in teacher-frontedcontexts Turn

% taken by teachers

% taken by students

Initiation Response Follow-up

87% 12% 97%

13% 88% 3%

Later in this paper, we will see what happens when the teacher restructures the discourse through use of an activity which scripts initiation and follow-up turns for student use, and how resultant use of follow-up assessments by students impacts the teacher's own use of aligning expressions. Before proceeding to this analysis of data, however, let us first consider how alignment is expressed in Japanese through the use of assessments.

4. Expression of alignment in Japanese: The function of assessments Languages have various resources which speakers use to display alignment with an interlocutor. One way speakers can show alignment is through use of assessments. Strauss (1995: 177), following Goodwin and Goodwin (1987, 1992), defines an assessment as "an interactive activity which involves the expressed evaluation of some entity, event, situation or state". She provides the following example of a Japanese assessment:

(i) 1 Mari:

hondana to hon ga kao ni ochite [kichatte

'the bookshelf and books fell at her face' 2 Ken:

[kowai na hidoi na sore. 'how scary na that's awful na'

(Strauss 1995: #1) The affective particle ne, an indicator of affective common ground (Cook, 1992) is common in assessments. Ken uses na, a variant of ne, after each assessment in line 2.

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In their study of assessments in English, Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) found that when an interlocutor produces an assessment, alignment is the usual response - this is extended assessment activity. This extended assessment activity creates within an interaction a place of heightened mutual orientation, constituted through linguistic means, through the production of interlocutor alignment. Clancy (1986) investigated the acquisition of communicative style by Japanese children; she found that Japanese culture inculcates its members in the expression of verbal agreement and empathy, particularly socializing children to assume an active role in conversational discourse. Strauss (1995) confirms the importance of the listener's role in Japanese. Strauss compared conversations between pairs of Japanese, Korean, and American nationals who experienced the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. She found extended assessment activity to be remarkably more common in Japanese than in Korean and English. Excerpt (2), from Strauss's (1995) data, evidences this high level of aligning activity. Turns containing interlocutor alignment are indicated with arrows, and the affective marker ne, which is a frequent feature marking alignment, is underlined. (2) 1 Ai:

maa rosanzerusu mo soo iu- na." nanchiundaroo ibento no ooi tte iu ka: warui imi de

'Well, Los Angeles has been, what shall I say? eventful, in a bad sense'. 2 Hide: ho:nto ni n__.c_eshizen to no tata- ne tatakai desu yo n__ge 'It's true ne. It's like a struggle against nature ne' 3 Ai: n___f_esoo desu ne: 'ne. Exactly ne: : ' 4 Hide" D e m o a m e r i k a no:, seefu toka.', sono: amerikajin kanari borantia seeshin ga aru shi: Kanari hayaku hukyuu hayakatta desho

'But the American government, or well, the American people have a pretty good volunteer spirit and, the damage repair was pretty fast, right?' --~ 5 Ai:

H a y a k a t t a shi

'(It) was fast, and' 6 Hide: Ne: boku ga bikkuri shita no wa taioo ga hayai na." to omotte, seefu nanka mo. n nihon no taioo ni kuraberu to n___c_e? 'Ne: what surprised me was, I thought that their reaction was fast,

and the (American) government's too, compared to Japan's reaction t/e?'

7 Ai:

H a y a i desu yo n__ge 'It was fast, n e ? ' 8 Hide: Mattaku yuushuu, ii desu yo ne

9 Ai:

'Completely excellent. (They are) good ne' Ee. Nihon w a nanka y o s a n k i m e r u toka itte [yuujuufudan desu yo n.ge. 'Yeah. As far as Japan is concerned, (they) say something like they have to budget the costs and they can't make a [decision ne'

---)

10 Hide:

[Nnne: ::

(From Strauss, 1995: #19, emphasis added)

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Even though these interlocutors are strangers brought together only to discuss the earthquake for data collection purposes, they reach a remarkable state of alignment. They consistently produce aligning assessments showing their concurrence with the thoughts and feelings expressed by their interlocutors. And, alignment is not limited to the utterance immediately following the initial assessment, but extended assessment activity continues beyond this, as the interlocutor who produced the initial assessment aligns with the aligning assessment. We see this in lines 1, 2, and 3. Line 1 contains the initial assessment of L.A. as eventful in a bad way, Hide aligns with this assessment in line 2, and Ai aligns in line 3. Also, in lines 4-7, when Hide assesses the damage repair as 'fast' in line 4, Ai aligns in line 5; Hide aligns in line 6, and Ai again produces an aligning assessment in line 7. Most of these initial and aligning assessments are marked with he, an affect marker which speakers use to display or to elicit displays of affective common ground (Cook, 1992). Clearly, learners of Japanese as foreign language must learn to show alignment through the use of utterances marked with affective particles such as ne. Learning only how to initiate assessments is not sufficient for participation in Japanese conversation; learners of Japanese must also acquire the ability to appropriately align with the affective dispositions of their interlocutors. Extended assessment activity is a vehicle for the expression of affect. Ochs (1988) points out that affect-laden constructions are likely to be highly salient to children acquiring their first language. Recall that Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) found that extended assessment activity provides a place of heightened mutual orientation within an interaction - arguably, this heightened orientation results from the expression of affect inherent in assessments and interlocutor alignment. Therefore, interactional routines in which interlocutors show their alignment with one another, such as extended assessment activity, may be a particularly powerful tools for the socialization of novices into culturally appropriate norms of interactional style. In the next section, we will explore the use of assessments in the Japanese language classroom corpus.

5. Assessments in the classroom: Teacher-fronted contexts

In this section, we will examine the use of assessments by learners in teacherfronted contexts, and the impact that this has on the subsequent discourse. Spontaneous assessments by learners in the corpus were extremely rare. Analysis of the teacher-fronted portions of the fourteen Japanese classes which make up the corpus reveal the production of only two spontaneous assessments by learners of Japanese, both uttered by students with significant opportunity to interact with Japanese native speakers outside the classroom setting. Other than these two spontaneous assessments, learners only produced assessments when guided to do so by the teacher, either by classroom materials with IRF structure which scripted in the use of an assessment (teachers A and B), or in a routine involving talking about the weather, which was used to open class (teacher D). The analysis below provides evidence that the familiar IRF routine can be a tool for socialization of an appropriate interac-

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tional style. Of interest here is not only that learners were, on occasion, explicitly guided in the use of assessments, but also the sequential consequences of these learner-produced assessments. In the data, learner use of assessments triggers extended assessment activity, as teachers then produce their own aligning assessments. When this occurs, students participate not only in their own assessments, but they also become participants in extended assessment activity, an important interactional routine. Teacher use of alignment may heighten orientation to the assessments themselves, while providing a living model (and a model in which the learners themselves are participating) of how to display alignment in Japanese conversation. Teachers A and B guided students in the expression of alignment through the use of a three turn, semiscripted mini-dialogue activity. While the instructional purpose of the mini-dialogue was to give students practice in producing adversative passives, the mini-dialogue also guided students in the production of affective alignment through the use of a ne-marked follow-up assessment. The role play activity is described below:

(3) A (I):

s a n ,

doo shita n desu ka ?

'What's wrong, (name) ?' B (R): (Learner-generated, unscripted response using an 'adversative passive') A (F): Sore wa hidoi desu ne.': 'How awful ?' This mini-dialogue scripts the initiation turn, where a learner asks his or her partner what is wrong. The response turn is left open for learners to create their own utterances using the adversative passive. In the follow-up turn, an aligning assessment offering an expression of sympathy is scripted. Scripting of the initiation and follow-up turns functions as scaffolding (Wood et al., 1976; Donato, 1994) which guides the learners to do what they are able to do for themselves - to give responses, something which learners do most frequently in the data - while providing appropriate support for actions that they may be unable to take unaided, namely the production of the aligning assessment, which they do rarely. These materials provide a situated opportunity for the learner to participate in assessment activity that s/he would be unlikely to perform without this assistance, while practicing production of adversative passives, which was the grammatical structure being explicitly taught. In the two classrooms where this activity was used, learners performed the minidialogues in pairs, practicing while the teacher circulated and provided assistance. After this learner-learner interaction, which was not recorded, the teacher nominated student pairs to perform in front of the class. In these performances, learner production of the he-marked assessment sets the stage for aligning assessments by the teacher, and extended assessment activity occurs. In excerpt (4), after the student produces the third-turn assessment, the teacher enters the learner-learner interaction as a third interlocutor by providing an aligning assessment of her own. Transcription conventions are given in the appendix. (4) 1

S 1 : Kate-san, doo shita n desu ka ?

'Kate-san, what's wrong?'

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2

$2: Watashi wa sensei ni takusan h o m e w o r k o watasaremashita. 'I was assigned lots of homework by my teacher.' 3 ~ SI: Sore wa hidoi desu ne." : 'That's awful ne: :' 4 ---~ T: ((laughing)) Hidoi desu ne:" ((laughing)) 'That's awful ne. : .' 5 li desu ne: yoku dekimashita ne. K o k o f u t a r i yatte mimashoo. 'Good ne: you did well ne. Here you two give it a try.' After laughing at S2's line 2 joke, the teacher aligns with the affect expressed in S l ' s line 3 assessment. This alignment increases the salience of the assessment activity, showing learners how to effectively express common ground with an interlocutor in Japanese. The teacher's assessment in line 4 is not evaluative, but aligns with the affect expressed by the student. In this way, the teacher both participates in learner talk and provides a model for students of how to produce aligning utterances in Japanese. After doing this extended assessment activity, in line 5, the teacher interactionally reconstructs herself as in the teacher role by providing an explicit evaluation of the student work done in the performance. She then nominates another student pair to perform. Teacher D also explicitly guided students to use assessments. She used a greeting sequence based upon talk about the weather in opening her Fall quarter class. This routine begins with a ne-marked description of the weather by the teacher and is followed by a student's aligning response also marked with ne. In Japan, this sequence might be considered equivalent to the American English 'How are you ---) Fine' greeting sequence. The initial turn which assesses the weather, varies in content according to how hot, cold, pleasant, or unpleasant the weather is. This routine, as it occurred in the data, is shown excerpt (5):

(5)

1 T:

Hai j a h a j i m e m a : s u (.) ohayoo gozaima: : :su

'Okay let's begin (.) good morning.' 2 Ss: Ohayoo gozaimasu 'Good morning' 3 T: Kyoo wa iya na tenki desu he: 'The weather is unpleasant today n e : ' ---) 4 Ss: Soo desu he: 'It is ne:' 5 T: l y a : : soo desu h e : : 'Unpleasant it is n e : : ' (Candace, 11/24) This routine also has IRF structure, with the initiation turn (line 3) containing the initial ne marked assessment. Students respond with the aligning ne marked assessment Soo desu ne:, 'It is, isn't it', shown in line 4. In turn, this triggers extended assessment activity, as the teacher aligns with the student response. The routine guides students into the production of extended assessment activity, where their

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assessment (line 4) aligns with an initial assessment (line 3) made by the teacher. This is the only example from the data where students produce an assessment which aligns with that made in by an interlocutor in the previous turn. Of the fourteen ne-marked assessments made by students in teacher-fronted activity in this corpus, in ten of these cases (71%) extended assessment activity occurred as the teacher responded with ne-marked assessments. Most of these cases involved the mini-dialogue (shown in 3 and 4), but teacher alignment also occurred in the weather routine (excerpt 5), and when learners made spontaneous assessments as shown in excerpt (6) from teacher C's class: (6) l

SI" Nanji kara nanji made gorufu o suru tsumori desu ?

'What time do you plan to play golf from and how long?' 2

$2: Shichi-ji (.) kara: (.) u." :m (.) u.'m (.) juu-ji made gorufu (.) gorufu o suru tsumori desu.

'I plan to golf from seven o'clock to ten o'clock.' 3 ---) S1- Hayai desu ne. 'That's early ne.' 4 ---) T: Soo desu ne." .'. Hayai desu ne: .'. 'That's so ne: .'. That's early ne: .".'

These data reveal the powerful impact that learner production of an assessment has on the ongoing discourse, resulting from the high degree of alignment which is preferred in Japanese discourse. Following student use of an assessment, all four teachers break out of evaluative use of language to co-construct with students natural alignment sequences that more closely resemble the kind of language learners need to be able to use when interacting with target language speakers outside of the classroom.

6. A s s e s s m e n t s in the c l a s s r o o m : L e a r n e r - l e a r n e r interactive contexts

Analysis of teacher-fronted activity shows how teachers may explicitly shape learner production of assessments, and how such assessments transform the teacher's participation as well as the students', allowing the students to become active participants in an interactional activity with sociocultural significance. The fact remains, however, that learners had little opportunity for expression of alignment, since their participation was generally limited to the answering of questions or response to drill. In this section, we will see what happens when learners do pair-work activities. The results of analysis provide evidence of the strong socializing effect of peripheral participation; when given the opportunity in unscripted pair-work contexts, learners may gradually develop the ability to express alignment and to use assessments in Japanese, even though they usually have access only to peripheral participation in teacher-fronted routines containing aligning assessments. The data to be examined are longitudinal data which record the interactions of one student, Candace, with the results of analysis showing how Candace's ability to

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produce expressions of alignment develops. This portion of the corpus, described earlier (Table 1), is described in more detail in Table 4. Candace, a college freshman, wore a clip-on microphone; her classes were video-recorded three to four times during each of the Fall, Winter, and Spring quarters. Data from five classes were transcribed for analysis. Each class session was 50-minutes long. Table 4 'Candace' corpus of learner-learner interactivedata Quarter

Fall

Winter

Spring

Transcript dates

11/27

1/24, 2/28

4/27, 5/22

Most of the learner-learner activities in these classes were pair question-answer activities which focused on use of a particular topic and syntactic structure. Over the year, Candace's developing ability to express alignment is evident in an increase in her use of the follow-up turn of the IRF. Before examining Candace's development, first the teacher's use of follow-up turn expressions will be examined in order to show the sorts of interactions Candace peripherally and actively participated in as a class member. Candace's teacher primarily uses the follow-up turn for evaluations and comments: ii desu ne, 'that's good', as an evaluation, and Aa soo desu ka?, 'Is that so?/I see', as a follow-up comment. The teacher also asks follow-up questions. Excerpt (7) provides a typical example: (7) 1 T: Paulson-san, terebi o mimasu ka ? 'Mr. Paulson, do you watch television?' 2 P: Hai mimasu 'Yes, I do.' --4 3 T: Mm 'Mm' donna terebi o mimasu ka ? 4 'what kinds of programs do you watch?' 5 P: Um Oprah (.) o mimasu 'Um I watch (.) Oprah' --~ 6 T: Ah: soo desu ka ? 'Oh, is that so?' 7 Eh:to Vasquez san (.) terebi o mimasu ka? 'U:m Ms. Vasquez (.) do you watch television?' (Candace, 11/27) The teacher's brief follow-up turn Mm in line 3, is immediately followed by a new initiation: the follow-up question in line 4. In line 6, the teacher uses the follow-up turn for a more extended expression of comprehension, Ah: soo desu ka. While neither is an explicit expression of alignment, both display listener attention and interest. Candace also had opportunity to observe her teacher and classmates using assess-

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ments in the weather routine shown earlier (she did not orally participate in this routine). This choral routine was the only time students produced an assessment in a teacher-fronted context in the 5 hours of data transcribed from Candace's classes, and the only time that extended assessment activity emerges. The teacher, however, does use the follow-up turn for assessments, as shown in excerpt (8), below:

(8) 1 T: Unagi o tabemasu ka ? 'Do you eat eel?' 2 SI: lie tabemasen 'No, I don't' 3 T: Tabemasen ( . ) j a S2-san unagi o tabemasu ka ? 'You don't (.) well, do you eat eel, S-2?' 4 $2: Hai tabemasu 'Yes, I do.' 5 T: Tabemasu (.) oishii desu ne.'. 'You do (.) It's good n e : . ' (Candace, 11/27) Depending upon the topic of discussion, the teacher used more or fewer assessments. One topic of discussion was cars. Related to this topic, the teacher used many assessments: (9)

---)

1 T: A n o o Smith-san wa (.) donna kuruma o motte imasu ka ? 'Urn, Smith (.) what kind of car do you have?' 2 S: Ah kuruma wa motte imasen. 'Ah I don't have a car.' 3 T: Ah soo desu ka ? Zannen desu ne:. 'Is that right? That's too bad ne: .' 4 Kim-san wa donna kuruma o motte imasu ka ? 'Kim, what kind of car do you have?' 5 K: Ii kuruma ((laughs)) 'A nice car' ((laughs)) 6 T: Ah ii kuruma o motte imasu ka ? ((All laugh)) li desu ne:" 'Ah a you have a nice car? ((All laugh)) That's ni: :ce ne: : .' (Candace 2/28)

Although the students are not specifically guided in the use of these expressions of affect, they are peripheral participants in routines in which these expressions are used by the teacher. The most frequently occurring assessment produced by the teacher, however, is the evaluation ii desu ne, 'good', occurring after learner production of a correct response. In excerpt (lO) she calls on a student to report an activity she did yesterday. (10) 1 T: Higashi-san 'Ms. Higashi'

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2 H: Kyooshitsu ni: (.) ikimasu ? 'I (.) go to the classroom?' 3 T: M m ii desu ne kyooshitsu ni ikimasu (.) ne hai (.) Brooks-san 'Mm good ne you go to the classroom (3 ne okay (.) Mr. Brooks' 4 B: Um (.) Hon o (.) yomimasu, 'Urn (.) I read a book,' 5 T: Hon o yomimasu (.) ii desu ne 'You read a book (.) good ne' (Candace, 11/27) This use of ii desu ne as a follow-up turn evaluation occurs quite frequently in the data, an average of 30.8 times per class (range, 19 to 43). The use of ne in evaluative assessments is different from its use in assessments that are responsive to the content of learner utterances; note the elongation and falling intonation on ne in line 6 of excerpt (9) (ii desu ne: :.) as opposed to the short vowel and flat intonation on ne in line 6 of excerpt (10) (ii desu ne). These different uses of the ne-marked assessment are used by the teacher to construct different roles as well - the evaluative role of the institutional teacher, and a more personal role where the teacher's own voice emerges as she expresses interest in the content of student utterances.t Both uses of ne-marked assessments are available to students through peripheral participation. The examples shown here are typical of those used by the teacher, with expressions of evaluation and understanding more frequent, and assessments showing interest in the content of a learner's utterance less frequent (though arguably more salient due to higher affective content) throughout the academic year. The Fall quarter data contained many of these routines, allowing peripheral participation in a variety of expressions of evaluation, understanding, and assessment performed by their teacher. However, neither Candace nor her partners for pair-work incorporated any of these features into their own talk in the Fall data set. There is nothing even as minimal as 'Mm' or 'uh-huh'. Follow-up turns are completely absent. A typical excerpt of Candace's language during pair-work at this point in time is given in excerpt (11), below: (11) 1 C: Supo- (.) ag: : (.) tenisu: : (.) tenisu: : s- tenisu o shirnasu (.) ka? 'Spor- (.) ag:: (.) tennis:: (.) tennis:: s- do you play (.) tennis?' 2 S: l i e s h i m a s e n 'No, I don't' 3 C: Supo:zu o- o shimasu ka? 'Do you play sports?' 4 S: lie shimasen

'No, I don't' (Candace, 11/27) As shown, Candace simply asks one question after another. Her partner does the same. As the year proceeds, however, Candace and her classmates begin to use the Thanks to Dina Rudolph Yoshimi for her insight here.

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follow-up turn, at first for expressions of comprehension, and then for assessments. In the Winter quarter data, Candace and her partner incorporate a third-turn comment, aa soo desu ka into their question-answer activity, even though this turn is not scripted as a part of the activity. An example is given in Excerpt (12). (12) 1 T: Hai tonari no hito kiite mite kudasai (.) Kinoo nani o shimashita ka? Okay ask the person next to you (.) what did you do yesterday? 2 C: Kinoo: nani o shimashita ka: ? What did you do yesterday? 3 S: Um: benkyoo (.) shimashita. Um: I (.) studied. --* 4 C: Ah: : soo desu ka? Oh, really? (Candace, 1/24) In the Winter data, Candace, her pair-work partner, and other students all use this expression, though it is absent in the Fall data. They do not yet do any aligning assessments. Two months later, in a Spring quarter class, Candace uses a greater variety of follow-up turn utterances, including assessments expressing comprehension and evaluation. She uses these in excerpt (13) after her partner successfully connects two sentences during an oral grammar activity. (13) 1 S: Yamada-san wa tenisu ga joozu de yakyuu wa joozu j a arimasen. Ms. Yamada is good at tennis, but not at baseball. 2 C: M m ii desu ne. ((Laughs)) 'Uh-huh, good he.' ((Laughs)) (Candace, 4/24) In line 2, she uses both M m and ii desu ne, evidence that she is gradually acquiring the ability to use features common to her teacher's follow-up turns. In the final class of the data set, Candace uses the greatest variety of types of follow-up expressions. Most significantly, she uses more assessments, including using ii desu ne to show appreciation for her partner's utterance. As shown earlier in excerpts (9) and (10), in the teacher's language the two uses are generally distinguished by vowel length and intonation contour. The elongated ne: or ne: : shows greater affective content than the shorter ne. Rising or flat intonation are used in evaluative assessments, while falling intonation, often accompanied by an elongated vowel, display the assessor's entering shared common ground with the interlocutor. In excerpt (14), Candace and her partner are asking each other what they do when suffering various ailments. Note Candace's use of an assessment in line 5: (14)

1 C: H m m . Atama ga itai toki nani o shimasu ka ? 'Hmm. What do you do when you have a headache?' ((use of 'what' is incorrect here)).

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2 S: D o o shimasu ka ? D- doo shimasu ka ? 'How do you do? Ho- how do you do' ((Japanese uses 'how' not 'what' in this context))) 3 C: A t a m a ga itai toki doo shimasu ka? 'How do you do when you have a headache' 4 S: Soo desu ne. (.) N e m a s u . ((laughs)) 'Let me see. (.) I sleep' ((laughs)) --) 5 C: Hahahaha. li desu ne." " . 'Hahahaha. That's goo:: :d ne." .".' (Candace, 5/22) After Candace asks the question in line 1, her partner first corrects her wording of the question (line 2), after which Candace rephrases her question. Candace's partner pauses (line 4), and then answers the question. Candace's line 5 assessment incorporates evaluation only in the sense that its very occurrence shows that S's answer was not problematic. Candace's most clearly conveys a hearty appreciation for her partner's answer, shown through the highly elongated ne: : : and falling intonation. In the laughter they share and Candace's explicit indexing of common ground through her assessment, she displays a shared enjoyment of the language game that students can play as they try to choose appropriate, grammatically simple answers in class. Here, S chose the one-word, versatile, nemasu, 'I sleep', rather than more difficult answers (such as kusuri o nomimasu, 'take medicine') that are part of the new vocabulary for this lesson. In this class, Candace uses other assessments responsive to the content of her partner's utterances. An example is shown in excerpt (15). In this activity, Candace and her partner are asking and answering questions about a series of pictures which show people with various injuries and ailments. (15) 1 L: D o o shita n desu ka? 'What happened?' 2 C: H a ga itai n desu. (2) D o o shita n desu ka? 'My tooth hurts. (2) What happened?' 3 L: Uh (.) koshi ga (.) ita- itai n desu. 'Uh (.) my back (.) hur- hurts.' ---) 4 C: H m m m . Zannen desu ne: :. 'Hmmm. That's too bad ne: : .' (Candace, 5/22) While she misuses zannen, which can only be used to express disappointment (not general sympathy for another's hardship - unfortunately the English translation does not adequately show how strange this word choice sounds in Japanese), Candace again evidences her ability to produce an aligning assessment - an assessment responsive to the content of her partner's talk. Longitudinal analysis of Candace's talk during pair-work reveals how, through peripheral and active participation in routines where the teacher modeled use of fol-

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low-up expressions showing comprehension, evaluation, and alignment with the utterances of students, Candace develops the ability to use Japanese for these functions. Because expressions of alignment are of great importance in Japanese conversation, it is of particular significance that here, in pair-work interaction during the last few weeks of the academic year, we see Candace spontaneously producing assessments which align with the content of her interlocutor's response in pair-work interaction, evidencing an increased level of comfort with the range of expressive possibilities of the IRF routine.

7. Discussion and concluding remarks Language socialization is not a rapid process. The analysis here provides evidence, however, that over time, through peripheral and active participation in interactional routines (as well as explicit guidance), the language of this adult language learner is shaped. Here we see how the IRF functions as a language socializing tool in the Japanese foreign language classrooms studied. Although in teacher-fronted contexts, student participation is limited primarily to the response turn, student participation in other turns of the IRF is guided in a mini-dialogue activity in two Japanese classes, and in a greeting sequence related to the weather in another class. In addition, student use of assessments in these contexts results in the production of extended assessment activity by the classroom teacher, through which students learn to participate in a linguistically constituted activity of significant importance in Japanese-speaking communities. Finally, longitudinal data from Candace's first-year Japanese class reveals how language development proceeds in a learner-learner interactive context, where Candace evidences language use we don't see in teacherfronted discourse. Through repeated participation in the routines of the classroom, Candace's ability to utilize follow-up turn expressions grows over the academic year, even though these turns are not scripted into the activities she does. By the end of the year Candace spontaneously produces ne-marked assessments in learnerlearner activity. Clearly, the interactional routines of the classroom have a profound impact upon the acquisition of the adult learner. Peripheral participation has a powerful socializing function; during the peripheral participation process, the learner gradually becomes more active, developing the ability to use routines for herself. Analysis of Candace's pair-work shows that learners exhibit language use patterns and foreign language ability in learner-learner collaborative activity that is not evidenced in teacher-fronted activities (see also Ohta, 1997, in press a,b; for other case-study findings which corroborate these results). Candace did not do follow-up turn utterances in teacher-fronted activities, where her participation was limited primarily to the response turn, and showed little evidence of her developing ability to do assessments. Curriculum design clearly has a role in creating opportunity for foreign language students to develop in the expression of affect. Curriculum developers and classroom teachers may impact the structure of classroom discourse through the types of classroom activities they design, and by explicitly providing learners with

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the opportunity to participate in the more flexible participant structure of pair-work, while also providing opportunities for reallocation of turns in teacher-fronted discourse settings. Here we see how pair activities provide students with opportunity to produce portions of interactional routines that they have participated in peripherally in teacher-fronted discourse. And curriculum design which guides students in an appropriate display of alignment through the use of assessments not only gives students the opportunity to use assessments, but these student-produced assessments further enrich the language of the classroom by creating conditions needed for extended assessment activity by teachers. The mini-dialogue context also did not script every turn, but allowed learners to use Japanese creatively to make their own meaningful utterances, as we saw in excerpt (4), where the student made a joke. Opportunity for creative meaning-making activity promotes language acquisition (Lantolf, 1997). As learners are given opportunity for participation in classroom routines, they become more skillful in their use, and become able to exploit their possibilities, as Candace shows us. And, when the curriculum guides students into expression of alignment, the opportunity for teacher participation in extended assessment activity is created, allowing learners become participant-observers in an interactional routine where heightened mutual orientation to language may make the interaction particularly meaningful, and therefore particularly salient for language acquisition. The data reveal how participant-observation and scaffolding create opportunities for learner participation in the expression of understanding and affect - these are clearly powerful forces in the socialization of appropriate interactional style, as language is jointly constructed in learner-learner and teacher-learner interactive contexts.

Appendix: Transcription conventions [

(()) (3 S1, $2

Indicates overlap Line to be discussed in the text Portion of special note to the current analysis rising intonation slight rise in intonation falling intonation comments enclosed in double parentheses elongation of a syllable brief pause false start Unidentified student

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Amy Snyder Ohta is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literature at the University of Washington where she teaches Japanese language and Applied Linguistics. She received her Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics from UCLA in 1993. Her primary research interests are in the area of situated second language acquisition, particularly of Japanese, with a special interest in classroom learning processes.