Conversation analysis

Tóm tắt

Conversation Analysis (CA) has been considered one of the critical approaches in Discourse Studies, which aims to understand how people maintain their interactions in daily spoken discourse (Paltridge, 2012). By carefully analyzing the transcriptions of audio and video recordings, CA examines the organization and development of spoken discourse that speakers perform in their everyday conversational interactions. Although this approach has contributed to language teaching and learning, it has attracted criticism with regard to the validity of the data. However, if CA combines with other methods such as ethnography and Critical Discourse Analysis, it would enhance the reliability of the technique. In other words, CA should be conducted in a kind of “multi-method” analysis which includes insights from CA and data from interviews, questionnaires, and participant observations (Wodak as cited in Paltridge, 2012). One major advantage of CA is to provide goals and practices for language teaching and learning, which help learners develop competent interactional outcomes. Therefore, teachers should employ CA findings in their courses, especially for listening and speaking classes.