Using conversation analysis (CA), this study examines the less explored languageteaching genre within an English as a foreign language (EFL) context: the writing center tutorials. Focusing the analysis specifically on tutor talk, this paper investigates the contingent production of third turns of second language (L2) tutors. Following the lead of Lee’s (2007) study of teachers’ third turns in classroom discourse, this study used CA to analyze audio-recorded tutoring sessions conducted in English. The analyses highlight five ways in which tutors make use of the third turn position in an IRF sequence to maneuver the tutorials, specifically contingent on the two types of student response in the second turn. Based on the analytic findings that illuminate the diverse functions of the tutors’ third turns, this study concludes with pedagogical implications for English-mediated writing center tutorials in EFL contexts.

This paper investigates teacher belief as a social practice in a focus group setting with three second language teachers by utilizing a discursive psychology (DP) approach (Edwards, 1997; Edwards & Potter, 2005). By adopting an empirically based emic perspective (i.e., how the participants display their understandings through their own contributions), we aim to respecify individual psychological states as an embodied interactional activity and study what members achieve through their interaction, particularly in their disagreement and teasing sequences. The findings show how teacher belief is a socially co-constructed phenomenon that not only evolves through interaction but stands as a foundational concept upon which participants build and display their teacher competence within the focus group setting. We thereby provide a new methodological means of investigation and new methods to focus on when examining teacher belief, as well as to show the procedure of what members do in a teacher belief focus group session. We conclude by summarizing our findings and addressing some implications for further work on teacher belief.