The Pivotal Role of Small Talk in Distance Teaching During Covid 19 Curfew Period

Human talk includes parts that are considered essential to share the understanding of the talk while some other parts may be viewed as just space filler, named 'small talk' (henceforth ST) (Coupland et al. 1992). This talk gains its name perhaps because it occurs at the side or margin of the 'main talk' (henceforth MT) as it may not contribute to the core of a talk. This does not mean to neglect this kind of talk as it could show a crucial role in participants’ MT (Abu-Elrob 2019b). Therefore, the present paper aims to give ST the attention it deserves by analyzing its occurrence in remote classroom environment to find whether it is only talk filler or purposive. This study also conducted an analysis of ST types and the linguistic features realizing the occurrence of ST. For a deep analysis of the data (classroom MT and ST), the conversation analysis (CA) framework was used to analyze the sequences and turns. The findings showed the benefits of ST to the learning process in general and to the main topic of the lesson in particular. The findings provide insights into the importance of ST in the learning environment and how it can be developed as a strategy to improve this environment. Keywords: Distance Teaching, Classroom Talk, Small Talk, Conversation Analysis.