By grounding its analysis in the participants’ observable conduct and displayed understanding, this case study takes an emic (participant-relevant) perspective and a praxeological (action-based) approach to analyze how consultation activities for second language (L2) learning evolve as social interaction. The study tracks how teaching objects (i.e., an object for the student to notice and potentially learn) emerge in interaction in situ (in context) and in vivo (as experienced) in the praxeological environment of IELTS consultations at a L2 speaking center and how students benefit from participating in them. The study’s secondary focus is to reconceptualize the notion of ‘noticing’ and ‘output’. This study aims to expand the understanding of noticing as a social practice and the theoretical and methodological scope of research on output by analyzing the dyadic interaction of a consultation activity with a specific analytical focus on a student’s act of noticing when deploying a teaching object. In the examples in the data, the student does not in the first instance notice through her own production. Rather, she notices the target form that the tutor has guided them toward. In other words, the analysis shows how the student shows her noticing of linguistic problems and attention to target forms through the collaborative social orientation with the tutor.

 

Eunseok Ro is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Liberal Studies at Kangwon National University (KNU). He received his Ph.D. in Second Language Studies from University of Hawai‘i in December 2017. He worked as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at City University of Hong Kong before he joined KNU in April this year. His research articles have appeared in various scholarly journals including but not limited to Applied Linguistics, Modern Language Journal, TESOL Quarterly, Journal of Pragmatics, Linguistics and Education, and Journal of English for Academic Purposes. His research interests include conversation analysis for second language acquisition, interactional competence, institutional interaction, literacy as social practice, and L2 pedagogy.