Teaching vocabulary through invoking conceptually accessible epistemic domains

ABSTRACT

While existing research into L2 classroom discourse has highlighted how knowledge and knowledge positions are negotiated, no attention seems to have been paid to what might be called conceptual epistemic domains. Drawing on 22 hours of video-recorded data from Iranian EFL classrooms, our conversation analytic study illustrates how invoking conceptually accessible epistemic domains creates interactional space for teachers to introduce conditionally relevant vocabulary. We define conceptual epistemic domains as areas of world knowledge to which learners have ostensible access. The bottom-up analysis of our data showcases that such practices serve two pivotal pedagogical functions: (1) providing contingent assistance; (2) initiating and maintaining warm-up activities. In the former, the teachers invoke the conceptually accessible epistemic domain facing learners’ claims of insufficient knowledge to elicit relevant further talk. In the latter, the teachers sequentially build up a shared conceptual access to conduct a warm-up activity. Both cases unfold interactional space where relevant vocabulary items emerge as learnables. We argue that by bringing to the fore what is conceptually accessible to the learners, teachers orient to relevant vocabulary items as teachable objects. Our findings thus shine light on an interactional resource through which the need for vocabulary teaching is talked into being.

KEYWORDS:

• Conversation analysis
• epistemics
• vocabulary teaching
• vocabulary learning

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all those who helped us collect the data for this study, namely Shokouh English Institute, Kish Institute of Science and Technology and Andishkadeh Academy. We would like to also extend our deepest appreciation to all the anonymous reviewers whose invaluable comments helped us develop this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).