Co-Operation, Perception, and Understanding in an L2 Classroom for the Visually Impaired

In this study, I adopt Goodwin’s (2018) theory of co-operative action to investigate the multi-modality of an EFL classroom where both the learners and their teacher are blind. I focus on evidence for both the role of the nonvisual senses, in particular, sound and touch, and the achievement of understanding during classroom tasks. I conducted this study over a 12-week period in a high school EFL class at a school for the visually impaired in Japan. The participants were six totally blind students and their teacher. The students were enrolled in a first-year high school EFL class for both blind and low-vision students. I collected three types of qualitative data: Video recordings of classroom activities, interviews, and participant observations. I analyzed the video recordings using multi-modal interaction analysis while using the other two sources of data to triangulate my observations. The results indicate that sounds have a deictic quality that allows blind L2 learners and their teacher to refer to the same thing at the same time. In addition, the touching of virtually identical materials written in Braille provides the intersubjective ground that makes most classroom interactions possible. Finally, the use of prostheses as an extension of touch into the experience of classroom tasks facilitates the achievement of understanding; rocking behavior, a historically stigmatized behavior of people who are blind, may also have a systematic character that aids in understanding. These findings suggest that senses other than vision play a role in not only the multimodal aspects of this particular context, but also in L2 classroom contexts in general.