Teachers’ multimodal resources for delegated peer repair: Maximizing interactional space in whole-class interaction in the foreign language classroom

Abstract

In classrooms, teachers play a fundamental role in managing students’ participation. As part of their classroom interactional competence to maximize interactional space for students’ learning, teachers use multimodal resources to orchestrate turn-taking, allocate the next speaker, and manage repair sequences. However, little is known about how teachers employ these resources to engage learners in delegated peer repair, that is, repair sequences initiated by a student and solved by another classmate. Adopting a multimodal conversation analysis approach, this study aims to investigate how Spanish-as-a-foreign-language teachers multimodally manage delegated peer repair in whole-group interaction by increasing interactional space to promote students’ participation. The findings show that teachers often resort to embodied resources such as gaze, gestures (pointing), and hand and body movements (stepping backward) to engage students in delegated peer repair, leading to increased student participation and autonomy. We end with some reflections on the relevance of the adopted methodology for better understanding how teachers employ multimodal resources to create interactional space and engage students in delegated peer repair, thus promoting learners’ interactional competence in the foreign language. It also suggests some potential implications for teachers’ professional development.