Openings for Classroom Interactions

As discussed earlier, when studying language learning within a language classroom community of practice, boundary areas, transitions between different participation structures in the classroom organization, are sites where learners' negotiation of participation through language is readily observed. In the language learning classroom, one such site is in the transition from teacher-cohort interaction to student-student interaction that occurs at the beginning of a teacher-assigned language learning task. At these points in the class period, the teacher has modeled a cooperative language learning task that students are to complete working with a peer. These tasks involve various degrees of lexical, grammatical and procedural structure supplied by the teacher. After the teacher gives the instructions and models the task, the students must negotiate the shift from the teacher-student cohort participation structure into the peer dyad participation structure and then together with a peer, using their linguistic, cultural, and local interactional resources through talk-in-interaction must negotiate participation in the task itself. The description of the starts, or, 'openings' of these tasks will allow us a greater understanding of learner-members' methods for ordering their talk-in-interaction within a classroom community of practice.

Opening face-to-face dyadic task interactions is a recurring action that students in many language learning classrooms (those that use small group interaction as part of their pedagogy) must accomplish. Such openings are also a fundamental practice for human interaction in general. Getting a face-to-face interaction started is a practice familiar in some way to all socialized adults. But because of their novice status with the language code and language culture, language learners may find it a challenging area to manage.