Takahashi2018
| Takahashi2018 | |
|---|---|
| BibType | ARTICLE |
| Key | Takahashi2018 |
| Author(s) | Junko Takahashi |
| Title | Practices of self-selection in the graduate classroom: Extension, redirection, and disjunction |
| Editor(s) | |
| Tag(s) | EMCA, Turn-taking, Classroom interactions, Graduate |
| Publisher | |
| Year | 2018 |
| Language | English |
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| Month | |
| Journal | Linguistics and Education |
| Volume | 46 |
| Number | |
| Pages | 70–81 |
| URL | Link |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.linged.2018.06.002 |
| ISBN | |
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Abstract
This study investigates the practices of student self-selection in the graduate-level American classroom. Self-selection is a crucial part of the learning process because it allows for the exchange of students’ and teachers’ views, analyses, and opinions, making these exchanges into a whole-classroom experience. Active students who make oral contributions in class are believed to learn more than those who do not (Weaver & Qi, 2005) and to enhance their critical thinking (Crone, 1997; Garside, 1996). In the graduate classroom, however, student self-selection may be challenging, as the material students tackle tends to be highly technical. Given the importance of student self-selection in this academically demanding context, more analytical attention must be devoted to uncovering the nature of participation. With 20 h of video data collected from graduate classes and analyzed through the lens of conversation analysis (CA), this study identifies three main practices employed by self-selecting speakers: extension by piling, contribution with hand-raising, and participation prefacing. Each occurs with different degrees of ‘fittedness’ to prior talk, in part evidenced in the different levels of mitigation use by the self-selectors. The findings of this study contribute to the small body of classroom discourse studies in the graduate classroom and provide a first step towards understanding how self-selections may be strategically managed or promoted.
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