Conversation analysis for language teaching

This paper presents a synthesis of studies that adopted Conversation Analysis (CA) to investigate L2 teaching. In our review, we have organized the studies in two broader categories depending on their research focus: teacher-learner interaction in the classroom and language teacher education. Our review of earlier research shows that either used alone or in combination with other methodologies, CA provides invaluable affordances for the analysis of L2 teaching practices in in-person, online, and hybrid educational contexts, as well as in language teacher education. Finally, we showcase how CA is used to explore aspects of language teaching, with a focus on teachers’ embodied vocabulary explanations in an English as a second language classroom in Sweden. Our empirical case depicts how a CA analysis can illustrate the intricate multimodal and sequential dynamics of teaching and learning that would go unnoticed without the affordances of the CA methodological toolset.