Raising awareness of interactional practices in L2 conversations: Insights from conversation analysis

This article presents the results from an experimental study on raising Japanese ESL students’ awareness of language-specific aspects of English through conversation analysis. The subjects were 100 non-language major undergraduate students at a university in Japan who were completing required academic English courses. For the purposes of this research, the participants received an introductory lecture on conversation analysis and used online video resources to study the basic concepts of conversation analysis and complete tasks and assignments. The data analysis and questionnaire responses suggest that the employed method had a positive effect on participant interest in the structure of English conversational interactions and language learning aptitude. The findings also suggest that the participants appreciated the opportunity to examine the intricacies of unscripted English conversations usually excluded from the standard ESL language classroom.