Introduction

After showing the micro-level interactive practices for co-constructing classroom communities of practice in the way adult language learners open classroom language-learning tasks (Chapter 3) and explicate understanding in those tasks through story tellings (Chapter 4), the focus of analysis in chapter five moves to another 'boundary' interaction that students negotiate: moving out of, or, disengaging from face-to-face task interactions.

Previous research: 'Closing' talk and 'disengaging' from interaction

The context for the research reported on in this chapter is like that in Chapter 3 – a boundary zone between dyadic task engagement and independent or teacher-oriented engagement in the classroom. The analysis shows how learner dyads working on teacher-assigned language-learning tasks move from interaction mediated by a teacher-assigned language-learning task to the following context for interaction that does not include explicit mediation from the teacher. These are members' methods for disengaging (Szymanski, 1999) from this dyadic task interaction. As with opening dyadic interactions, the talk in disengagement sequences is oriented to the task, to the interlocutor, and the discursive practices of the particular classroom community of practice. While similar sequences have been investigated in previous research on other contexts (Antaki, 2002; Goldberg, 2004; Hartford & Bardovi-Harlig, 1992; House, 1982; Jefferson, 1973; Schegloff & Sacks, 1973; Szymanski, 1999), studies have not focused on the language-learning classroom context to understand these practices of students. After observing the collection of dyadic task interactions, categories for disengagement from these interactions emerged reflecting the orderly practices for talk that members of the classroom community of practice use for these particular contexts.

Conversation analytic investigations of the sequential practices for ending telephone calls called 'closings' started with Schegloff and Sacks' (1973) seminal paper 'Opening up closing' which was motivated by their noting the orderliness of conversations in general and in their endings in particular. Absence of talk occurs quite regularly as part of conversations or other talk-in-interaction.