A Conversation Analysis Approach to Teaching Interactional Competence to Iraqi EFL learners

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to propose a course model for teaching interactional competence from a conversation analysis perspective to Iraqi EFL learners at college level. The model aims at producing communicatively competent and appropriate language learners who can interact properly in natural linguistic interactions through applying the principles and findings of Conversational Analysis. The procedure suggested is divided into five integral stages; raising awareness, analysis, execution, reflecting, and inoculation followed by assessment procedure. The suggested focus of the model includes; inter-subjectivity, co-construction, adjacency pairs, turn-taking system, repair mechanism, topic management and sequential organization such as (openings, centering, pre-closing, closing), socio-cultural norms as greetings in openings, speech acts such as invitation and apology, leave-taking in closing, assessments, in addition to paralinguistics as prosody, body language, silence and response tokens, in addition to functions and the social and cultural aspects of English conversations