Turn-taking skills for language teaching: Part 1
By Jono Ryan
One thought leads to another, and to another. Into my Google feed this morning came an extract from a just published book by Noam Chomsky and Andrea Moro. Picking up on Chomsky’s earlier advice that “It is important to learn to be surprised by simple facts”, Moro notes the following:
“The sudden awareness of something that calls for an explanation, once the fog of habit has lifted, seems to be the real stuff revolutions’ sparkles are made of . . . the real force comes from asking questions about what all of a sudden doesn’t seem to be obvious.”
which resonates with an observation from Wittgenstein 70 years earlier:
“The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity. (One is unable to notice something because it is always before one’s eyes.) . . . . this means: we fail to be struck by what, once seen, is most striking and powerful” (Wittgenstein, 1958, Bullet 129)
which reminded me of turn-taking.
But to back up even further: as an undergraduate studying philosophy, I vividly recall a conversation with an acquaintance who mentioned that he was studying for a higher degree in the philosophy of time. The philosophy of what? I was dumbstruck at the realization that this was even a thing. Time, I had thought, was just something that inched forward in the ticking of the biological clock. No mystery there at all. But it took only moments to see that there was so much more going on than I had imagined. Dozens of books have been written on it.
I had much the same experience with turn-taking just over a decade ago when reading Wong and Waring’s (2010) introduction to Conversation Analysis (CA) for language teachers [now in its 2nd edition (2021)]. Turn-taking is one of the key topics in CA, and this in itself seemed remarkable – surely one person speakers and then another? What more could possibly be said about it?
As it turns out, a great deal. Notice the following during group discussions: there may be no discernible break in the chatter yet ‘the floor’ transitions from one speaker to another seamlessly. Using audio software such as Audacity, we can see that one speaker finishes and the next begins with often exquisite timing. The most common gap between speakers is around two-tenths of a second – which is literally shorter than the blink of an eye (about three-tenths of a second). Remarkably, this is also much shorter than the time it takes to generate a simple thought and vocalize it (0.6s) (Enfield, 2017). Other transitions happen with no break at all: the next speaker’s turn latches on to the final syllables of the previous speaker. What this all points to is an enormous degree of coordination between conversational partners. Speakers are very good at signalling and identifying the approach of a turn ending, opportunities to speak, and rights to the floor.
But does any of this matter for English language teaching?
Absolutely. When international students go on to mainstream tertiary study, they are expected to participate in tutorials and group discussions, and in some cases are allocated a certain percentage of the overall course grade (5% or 10%) based on their contribution to the class. Yet time and again, students have reported that they are eager and willing to talk, but that they just can’t find the right moment to join the discussion. And when the chance does arise, the topic has moved on (Ryan & Forrest, 2021). From then on, they may then lack the discourse management skills to return to the earlier topic. Similar problems occur in the workplace, where migrants report feeling unable to join conversations and voice contributions (Cui, 2015). There are a number of complex, intertwined reasons for this that we can return to at a later time.
The most pressing question, however, is whether we can do anything about. Over my next couple of blog posts, I aim to show that we can. I’ll be presenting some teaching ideas my colleague and I have trialled and identifying some very specific micro-skills that can be practiced in class. Armed with these, language learners need not passively wait to be allocated a turn. They can become better at identifying upcoming opportunities to speak and can learn ways to effectively manage the floor. Until next time.
Cui, X. (2015). Small talk: A missing skill in the Chinese communicative repertoire. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 38(1), 3-23.
Enfield, N. J. (2017). How we talk: The inner workings of conversation. Basic Books.
Ryan, J., & Forrest, L. (2021). ‘No chance to speak’: Developing a pedagogical response to turn-taking problems. Innovation in language learning and teaching, 15(2), 103-116. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2019.1687709
Wittgenstein, L. (1958). Philosophical investigations (G. E. M. Anscombe, Trans.; 3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.
Wong, J., & Waring, H. Z. (2010). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers. Routledge.
Wong, J., & Waring, H. Z. (2021). Conversation analysis and second language pedagogy: A guide for ESL/EFL teachers (2nd ed.). Routledge.