When extending wait-time is not enough for student participation: Eliciting student responses during L2 whole-class speaking

This study investigates the strategies Second Language (L2) English teachers use to pursue student responses when Extended Wait-Time (EWT) proves ineffective in leading to student participation during whole-class speaking. Benefitting from an EWT as a feature of Classroom Interactional Competence (CIC) is essential for language teachers to reinforce the use of the target language and create learning opportunities. Several studies focusing on the employment of EWTs in different contexts have revealed that three to 5 s of EWT leads to student involvement. However, the sequential strategies that L2 English teachers employ in the post-extended wait-time context have not yet been investigated in great detail. This study, therefore, aims to unfold the management strategies of an L2 English teacher to pursue student responses when her EWTs fail to involve students through the lens of Conversation Analysis (CA). The examination of 17 h of video recordings from three L2 English classrooms reveals that the teacher employs various interactional strategies to enhance student engagement when her EWTs are insufficient, including using question broadening, hinting, narrowed-down repetition, and drawing on a range of multimodal resources (such as pedagogical artifact and embodied behavior). While EWTs remain a valuable tool, this study emphasizes the need for teachers to have a repertoire of additional strategies to elicit student participation. As such, it has direct implications for CIC.