Classroom interaction and Conversation Analysis

L2 learning inside and outside classrooms Is L2 learning the same inside the classroom as outside? One extreme point of view sees the L2 classroom as a world of its own. Teachers and books slip into the habit of referring to the world outside the classroom as the ‘real world’ – New Cutting Edge (Cunningham et al., 2005) has a section in each unit called ‘Real life’ – denying that the classroom is a part of the real world for its participants. What the students are doing in a classroom may be quite different from the ‘natural’ ways of learning language they would experience in an uncontrolled situation. Thus some teaching exploits deliberately ‘unnatural’ L2 learning. Focus on form (FonF), for instance, is exploiting the other faculties the mind has available for L2 learning, rather than making use of the ‘natural’ processes of the language faculty specifically dedicated to language learning. At the opposite extreme is the view that all L2 learning, or indeed all language learning of the first or second language, is the same. The classroom, at best, exploits this natural learning, and at worst puts barriers in its way. What happens in class has to be as ‘natural’ as possible, dodging the question of the bitter disputes over exactly what natural language learning might be.