A growing number of task-based learning (TBL) research has employed a processoriented research framework to analyze second language data in L2 classrooms using a task-in-process vs. task-as-workplan dichotomy (e.g., Seedhouse, 2004). Adopting the task-in-process framework, the current study analyzes how students in Korean EFL classrooms interact during information gap task activities. How do sequences of interaction during information gap tasks differ from the task-as-workplan? What are the specific institutional goals that the participants orient to while completing these tasks? This article attempts to answer these questions by analyzing the interactions that occur during a series of information gap tasks performed by different groups of Korean middle school students. The findings show how information gap tasks create minimized and truncated sequences that are different from the task-as-workplan as well as from how people would interact in ordinary conversation. Rather than promoting more talk by engaging in negotiation of meaning, learners engaged in a series of completion-oriented sequences to find the correct response in the most efficient way possible. The paper ends with suggestions for improving the design of tasks in pedagogical settings.

Conventional expressions are considered an important area of study informing L2 pragmatics and inter-language pragmatics. This study investigates the differences between native English speakers’ and Korean EFL speakers’ productions of conventional expressions by employing an audio-visual production task (adapted from Bardovi-Harlig, 2009). Results show that EFL students statistically differ from their native speaker counterparts in about half of the scenarios involving the production of conventional expressions. While EFL learner productions were often grammatical and appropriate, they also displayed pragma-linguistically infelicitous utterances (e.g., I’m just looking out.) and more verbosity compared to their NS counterparts. Certain scenes including giving and deflecting thanks delivered less target-like expressions, which may lead to communicative failure in real time interaction. Pedagogical implications of this type of study are also discussed.

A meta-analysis was conducted to analyze the history of discourse analytic studies that appeared in the English Teachingjournal ofKorea over the past 50 years. Atotal of 161 studies were categorized according to discourse modes, primary themes employed and levels of application. The results indicated that in the most recent years, DA articles occupy about 22% ofthe total studies published in thejournal, with an overall increase in DA studies analyzing written texts. Qualitative studies such as ethnographies and case studies employing discourse data as a primary component of data analysis have also steadily increased over the years. The findings suggest that in the future, more DA research on primary or secondary level students, classroom interactions, and critical discourse studies examining the Korean context may benefit a wider range of readership who may be interested in the practical application of DA results to the Korean English education context.

This paper extends research on interactional forms of teacher repeats and their management in third turn by analyzing teacher student interaction in Korean EFL classrooms. Research has shown that classroom interaction is characterized by an overwhelming number of teacher repetition in feedback moves fo llowing the Initiation-Response-Feedback seq uence (S inclair & Coulthard 1975); whereby the teacher controls the interaction through evaluation of the student answer. In the tightly contro lled contexts of Korean EFL classrooms, the teacher appears to be constantly placed in a position of conflict. She has to fo llow a tightly sched ul ed lesson plan, which allocates a rather strict time frame and organization, at the same time attend to indi vidual student learning. The foca l practice is understood as these teachers' attempt at resolving the obstacle through interactive practices of repeating the student response. The focal practice promotes the possib ili ty of producing a soc ially harmonious, accepting response (i.e., intersubjectiv ity) without compromising lesson progressivity, desp ite the fact that the responses or part of the response produced by the student is not fu lly accurate. Fi nally, the in teractive consequences of the focal practice are compared with other eva luative tokens that may also occur in the third turn.