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Getting Beyond Conversation Analysis: Critical and Pedagogical Implications for
TESOL/Bilingual Curriculum for Diverse Learners in the Age of Globalization
• How do you see the way of closing the conversation How do you interpret
this in your culture
• Do you think the socio-cultural background of speaker A affects his way of
interacting with speaker B Why do you think so etc.
In groups, the ESL learners negotiated rules and dispersed knowledge to answer the
questions, achieving joint accomplishments. During interactions, the ESL learners
manipulated CA concepts (e.g., adjacency pairs), called upon interactional competence
rather than social competencies, and became members in a community of practice,
apprenticing themselves to a group of people who share a certain set of practices
through joint action (Gee, 2004). In other words, the participation of the students
started to change; they started to talk more, perform more turns, and achieve many
of the actions that were initially performed by me, like producing more questions
about the story. Not only did the quantity of the students’ talk increase, but they also
showed they had experienced cognitive, meta-cognitive, and critical practices and
had become more independent of my directions.
As can be seen, although English conversation is well-structured and organised and
can be achieved in a systematic process, its systematic nature does not mean that it is
an end in itself, away from critical and pedagogical implications for TESOL/bilingual
curriculum for diverse learners. Instead, it can be a valuable source for diverse ESL/
bilingual learners to reflect and think critically to understand the sensitivity of English
conversation and perceive it as a significant and fundamental connection between
them and other English speakers to achieve mutual understanding. However, learners
can be exposed and introduced not only to the conversations produced inside their
classroom, but also to different types of English conversation produced in different
situations and contexts by different English people and other speakers of English as
a second language for more critical and pedagogical purposes related to empowering
learners, improving their cognitive and meta-cognitive skills, enhancing their critical
thinking skills and raising their social and cultural awareness. In this way, learners
with their teachers can undertake a critical and pedagogical journey by discussing
stimulating and reflective questions related to the different types of English conversation
presented by different tools and symbols from different contexts and sources.
As a facilitator, I had a very important impact in the process. I tried to make
“foreign language classrooms as ideal places to learn about social differences in
ways that challenge students’ lack of knowledge and/or mis-knowledge of people
who are different from them” (Kumashiro, 2004). I tried to create an environment
which can help learners understand the sensitivity of the context of English language
conversation with respect to achieving mutual understanding, leading learners to “a
crisis” which can trouble their knowledge and commonsense, raise their social and
cultural awareness, and empower them. My students and I went through a critical
and pedagogical journey by discussing stimulating and reflective questions related to
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