Identification and Distribution of Interactional Contexts in EFL Classes: The Effect of Two Contextual Factors

This study aims at empirically furthering awareness of the organization of interaction in EFL classes. Informed by the methodological framework of conversation analysis, it draws upon a corpus of 52 threehour naturallyoccurring classroom interaction to identify classroom interactional contexts based on the structuring of the pedagogic goals in turntaking sequences. Conversation analytic procedures were then paired with quantitative procedures to explore the distribution of the identified contexts within the macrocontext of classroom discourse and to investigate the effect of interactionexternal factors, i.e., teachers’ training and learners’ levels of language proficiency, on the distribution of the identified contexts. Analyses of extracts from the transcribed data led to the emergence of four interactional contexts: formoriented, meaningoriented, skilloriented, and managementoriented. As to their distribution, formoriented and skilloriented contexts were found to be constitutive of the bulk of interaction, with meaningoriented context comprising the smallest proportion. A twoway multivariate analysis of variance revealed that the distribution of all identified contexts was significantly affected by learners’ levels of language proficiency. Teachers’ training had a significant main effect on just formoriented and managementoriented contexts. The findings of this study draw teachers and teacher educators’ attention to the necessity of a change in the status quo of EFL classroom interaction.