GRL RealHidden v1.0:

By screening the 24-hour video and audio recordings of the classroom interaction data, the instances that S1 relies on the L1 linguistic pattern ‘how (would) you say…/could you say… ’ and its L2 equivalent ‘zenme shuo’ have been identified for further analysis. For S1, during the four weeks’ instruction which across the time span of two months, he initiates assistance by L1 questions to elicit L2 lexical items such as ‘what’s to cook? ’, ‘which one is ‘nainai’?’. He also makes clarification requests through the L1 with the questions like ‘if you wanna say …, ‘do you say…’, ‘do you have to say…’.There are seven instances that he uses ‘how (would) you say…’ or ‘could you say…’ as a device to request for help in word-search from other interlocutor(s). The following transcript has shown how S1 asks for help in the L1 in Week 1’s last session—the oral class.

Except 5. 12 (oral class, Day 5, Week 1)

25 S1: je-do you could you say lai↑ or say lai jia

{come} {come home}

26 (…)

{come }

28 (4.6)

In Excerpt 5.12, in line 25, S1 initiates a word-search, in the meantime, which is also a clarification request, tries to elicit the correct L2 lexical form of ‘come home’ from his peer

learner S2. Through the question ‘do you could you say’, he makes two suggestions for

the linguistic choice, to which S2 chooses one of the two but with uncertainty.

Excerpt 5.13 (oral class, Day 5, Week 1)

1 S1: how would you say then(.)was trying to say(1.2) the

2 the(.) young sisters so the(.) the(.) younger

3 ehm(…)brother’s(.) girlfriend(.) doesn’t like coming

4 to house(.) because the cat doesn’t like

5 S2: okay=

6 S1: =°doesn’t like her°

7 ehm: ((laughing sound))

8 S2: so who doesn’t like↑ what↓ sorry

A few minutes later, the learners are continuing their pair work, which is documented in Excerpt 5.13. When S1 encounters difficulties in making an L2 sentence (lines 1-4), which requires relatively complex structure for his intended meaning, he incorporates the same L1 grammatical structure ‘how would you say then’ to elicit the construction of the L2 sentence.

In Week 2, S1 has been absent for several teaching sessions. In those sessions that S1 attends, the L2 structure ‘zenme + verb’ has been employed in different circumstances by both T1 and other learners, to which S1 attentively engages in their interaction (the data will be presented in the following Section 5.5.2, while the analytic focus shifts to T1’s use of the structure).

initiating word-searches has been observed. Instead, S1’s initiates more instances of clarification requests following invitations to T1 to evaluate his L2 products and to test his own hypotheses of the language. He engages in the instruction deeper beyond the activity of word-search, but put more effort into understanding grammatical structures and concepts. When the group enters Week 4, in which the pedagogical focus becomes leading learners to review all the linguistic items and structures learned in the whole semester, the activity of word search, along with the interactional moves to initiate it has returned to S1’s learning interactional organisation, with a change observed in his language choice, which is shown in the following Excerpt 5.14 (The interaction has already been analysed in Section 4.3 as Excerpt 4.7.1, when the affordances available in the classroom are demonstrated. In this section, the transcript is used as the example for the development of the structure ‘zenme shuo…’ as an interactional device).

Excerpt 5.14 (revision class, Day 16, Week 4)

1 S1: laoshi ↑(1.0)zenme shuo teach(1.4)zenme zenme shuo

{teacher how say how how say } {teacher, how to say’teach’? how how to say’teach’?}

2 teach (0.7)

3 T1: jiao

{teach}

4 S1: jiao oh

{teach}

5 T1: ehm: yaoshi ni bu hui shuo teach ni keyi shuo I

{ if you N1 can say you can say }

{if you don’t know how to say ‘teach’, you can say}

6 learn Chinese from ↑

7 8

S1: yeah (0.7)

encounters the problem in finding the appropriate L2 equivalent of ‘to teach’. Compared to his previous similar initiating activities, as showed in Excerpt 5.12 and 5.13, S1 has chosen to request the help exclusively in the L2. The linguistic structure has been changed from the L1 structure ‘how (would) you say…/could you say…’ to the L2 structure ‘zenme shuo…’. In his request, he accentuated the trouble source ‘teach’ to draw T1’s attention. This request has successfully elicited the teacher’s response, which then solves his L2 problem.

In this instructional exchange, the L2 structure ‘zenme shuo…’ is not the learning object. In contrast, as a vital semiotic resource, it serves the mediational function for S1 to elicit crucial linguistic knowledge for the particular L2 development—the equivalent of ‘to teach’. It helps the learner to elicit assistance from the expert while he is not able to solve the problem

independently. The L2 structure is the emerging L2 interactional competence of S1. However, as an L2 beginner, S1’s control of the structure as the information requesting device is

unstable. In the remainder of Week 4’s classroom interaction, in similar circumstances, S1 returns to the L1 structure ‘how (would) you say…/could you say…’in a slightly different version, which is presented in the following transcript.

Excerpt 5. 15 (revision oral class, Day 20, Week 4)

1

2

S1: laoshi ↑(0.9)to say ↑:eh to go to somewhere how long it

{teacher}

take it’s(0.8)ehm so translations qu huoche zhan

{go train station} {go to the train station} 3 T1: um hum

4 S1: ehm yao:

{need}

In this excerpt extracted from the last session of the data collection, S1 encounters a problem in expressing the meaning of ‘how long does it take…’. In order to gain assistance from T1, S1 makes the request using the L1 structure ‘to say ↑:’ which is simplified from ‘how to

say’. He waits for a short pause after he makes the request, then tries to form an L2 sentence for T1’s further evaluation.

Through looking at the use of ‘how (would) you say…/could you say…’, we can see that the structure has been a stable interactional and mediational device for S1 in the activity of eliciting help in the word-searches as well as in making clarification requests to other interlocutors in the classroom. Most of the time, S1 relies on the L1 to fulfil his learning needs. In Week 4, it can be observed that the L2 equivalent of the structure—‘zenme shuo…’ has been into play. Although the use of this L2 structure is not stable as S1 chooses to shift back to L1 use while conducting the same action later in the week, this interactional behaviour is considered as the emergence of his L2 interactional competence, which is defined as L2 grammar-for-interaction by Pekarek Doehler (2018). In the following section, I will present how the emergence of this L2 interaction competence is embodied and mediated in the interaction between T1 and the learners in this CFL classroom.