Interactional competence of mixed-ability ESL learnes: how do engineering esl learners manage interactions in group oral discussion?

Abstract

Being proficient in English is deemed important even from job interviews up to professional career especially for graduates. Group oral discussion tasks during interview process is practised by some companies in order to assess graduates’ oral communicative abilities as well as their interactional skills interacting with other speakers. In enhancing graduates’ communicative abilities, group oral discussion task is now commonly used both in pedagogic and assessment contexts around the world and in Malaysia due to its potential to elicit learners of English as a Second Language linguistics and interactional skills. However, group discussion tasks consisting of mixed proficiency learners to assess second language proficiency can influence the talk itself. The presence of other speakers of various proficiency, the topics given and the management of turns can all influence the way speakers interact in group oral discussion. The current study main objectives are to: i) investigate the co-constructed interaction of engineering undergraduate learners of mixed proficiency levels who are engaged in a group oral discussion task, and; ii) to provide insights into the conceptualisation of Interactional Competence (IC) key features and other important IC elements displayed by the learners. Using Young’s (2011) Interactional Competence (IC) as its foundation combined with Conversation Analysis as the analysis tool designed under a qualitative method research framework, this thesis analyses 57 engineering undergraduates’ interactions in oral group discussion task for their interactional abilities from a one of Malaysian technical universities. The analysis draws on a close micro-analytic account of IC interactional resources including non-verbal resources. The instruments used are audio visual recordings of oral group discussion triangulated with focus group interviews and reflective report forms conducted with the participants involved. The findings support past studies in the literature that IC needs to be expanded to also include non-verbal communication through the use of mutual gaze and other gestures displayed by speakers during the interactions. More importantly, the findings show the students’ weakness at reiterating or expanding what other speakers have previously said. Other-repair from team members indicates that students are not really listening despite saying “I agree with you”. The findings of this thesis have implications for interactional and pedagogical consequences for developing oral communicative abilities of engineering undergraduates on the part of the learners, instructors, curriculum developers as well as the industry.