This paper studies tasks-in-process (Breen, 1989) to examine the impact of pedagogical materials on the ongoing interaction. In order to understand the affordances provided by pedagogical materials, it is important to analyze how students use these materials in the classroom (see Kunitz et al., 2022).

Drawing on video-recorded data from EFL students’ dyadic interactions in Swedish upper secondary schools, this study-in-progress uses multimodal conversation analysis to examine and compare the affordances of two types of pedagogical materials (cut-out pictures and actual material objects) in an oral task designed to foster the practice of students’ interactional competence (Pekarek Doehler, 2018) in the L2.

Using a task-based language framework (Ellis, 2003) and a blueprint for open-ended problem-based tasks (Berggren et al., 2023), oral tasks were designed with a focus on manipulating the task input to compare how differences in the materiality of pedagogical artefacts might impact the ongoing task-based interactions in different ways. Previous (Kunitz et al., 2022) and ongoing observations (Hoskins & Kunitz, 2023) suggest that the students seemingly orient to and make relevant the materials both verbally and embodiedly as they engage in collaborative imagining (Murphy, 2005). More specifically, the students co-construct imaginative stories around the items represented on cut-outs and around the material objects provided in the task input. In the case of the cutouts, the students orient to their visual appearance to identify the items represented on the pictures and may exploit visual features to provide alternative identifications while they make sense of the potential roles of the identified items in the developing story. It is further hypothesised that the specific features of material objects also play a role in the developing story. The findings contribute to our understanding of the role of pedagogical materials in the EFL classroom and the impact of task design on task-based interaction

References

Berggren, J., Kunitz, S., Haglind, M., Hoskins, A., Löfquist, A., & Robertson, H. (2023). Combining theory and practice: Findings from a collaborative project on oral task design. In G. Erickson, C. Bardel, & D. Little (Eds.), Collaborative research in language education research: Reciprocal benefits and challenges (pp. 11-28). Mouton de Gruyter.

Breen, M. (1989). The evaluation cycle for language learning tasks. In R. Johnson (Ed.), The second language curriculum (Cambridge Applied Linguistics, pp. 187-206). Cambridge University Press. 

Ellis, R. 2003. Task-based language learning and teaching. Oxford University Press. 

Hoskins, A., & Kunitz, S. (2023, 16 November). The affordances of visual ambiguity in L2 classroom tasks for promoting collaborative interaction. The 7th Nordic Interdisciplinary Conference on Discourse and Interaction (NORDISCO), Tampere, Finland.

Kunitz, S., Berggren, J., Haglind, M., & Löfquist, A. (2022). Getting students to talk: A practice-based study on the design and implementation of problem-solving tasks in the EFL classroom. Languages, 7(2), 75.

Murphy, K. (2005). Collaborative imagining: The interactive use of gestures, talk, and graphic representation in architectural practice. Semiotica, 156, 113–145. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2005.2005.156.113 

Pekarek Doehler, S. (2018). Elaborations on L2 interactional competence: The development of L2 grammar for interaction. Classroom Discourse, 9, 3–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/19463014.2018.1437759