Abstract
In 1975, just one year after Sacks, Schegloff, and Jefferson published their landmark paper, Irene Daden, then a master’s student in Applied Linguistics at UCLA, wrote a thesis with this intriguing title: Conversational analysis and its relevance to the teaching of English as a second language.  In the intervening decades conversation analysis (CA) has grown from an obscure offshoot of sociology into one of the most vibrant and active research paradigms within the field of second language education. Over the past dozen years, a mounting number of CA studies has explored the intricacies of second language talk, helped to chart pedagogic practices in the classroom, sought to illuminate novice-expert discourse identities, and even attempted to capture language learning as it happens in-situ.

Yet in the intervening decades since Daden wrote her thesis, there has been little progress in terms of applying CA to the teaching of English as a second language.  Only the barest few of the world’s language teachers have even heard of conversation analysis. At the largest conferences for language teachers, CA has had only a token presence.  Moreover, commercially published ESL teaching materials fail to offer a single CA-inspired textbook, and in fact, continue to present English models in stark conflict with the routinely observable patterns of interaction.  The purpose of this presentation is to revisit Daden’s original question:  What practical relevance does CA have for classroom ESL/EFL teachers? In short, how can hard-working language teachers benefit from Conversation Analysis?  During this talk, I’ll detail and demonstrate some of the ways that I have personally tried to apply CA to my own language teaching, in particular the teaching of conversation.

Bio
Dr. Donald Carroll has been a professor in Shikoku Gakuin University’s Department of Language and Culture since 1996.  Prior to that he taught applied linguistics and EFL/EAP/ESP in Mexico, the Sultanate of Oman, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia.  He has a Ph.D. from the University of York (2006) and a BA and MA in Applied Linguistics from California State University, Fullerton (1980, 1984).  Don has also taught an Introduction to Conversation Analysis course for Temple University Japan’s MATESOL program at both the Tokyo and Osaka Campuses.

Date, time & location
Wed. Nov. 20th
6:15-7:30pm
Kagawa University
Education Campus
Room 423