Understanding ‘understanding’ in teal classes: an interactional multimodal approach

Abstract

 ‘Understanding’ is crucial to any social interaction, but in teaching and learning contexts it gains even more explicit attention. In teaching English as an additional language (TEAL) environments, ‘understanding’ may become a costlier task, since an additional language normally presents further challenges to the participants. This paper focuses on occasions of deliberate search for the construction of understanding and/or for understanding checks. Based on fifteen audio and video recorded classes of TEAL and supported by a multimodal perspective (Streeck et al., 2011) of conversation analysis (Sacks et al., 1974), this study shows how learners make their understandings explicit and, consequently, socially observable by producing claims and demonstrations of understanding. The multimodal interactional analysis (carried out from an emic and sequential perspective) reveals how each of these phenomena, commonly found in educational settings – i.e., claims of understanding vs. demonstrations of understanding – take distinct shapes and generate distinct interactional outcomes. The paper also discusses the pedagogical implications of each phenomenon to the process of teaching and learning additional languages.