Talking perspective: Conversation analysis and culture in the German foreign language classroom

From a social-interactionist research perspective, this study in second language acquisition (SLA) investigates the effects of teaching American learners of German specific multi-turn action sequences underlying particular verbal activities in the target language based on findings in conversation analysis (CA).; As stimulus material, the teaching unit utilized results of CA research about the sequential organization of telephone openings and compliment-responses in American English and German. The findings of this study are based on a conversation analytic examination of a corpus of two sets often 5--10 minute telephone conversations in the target language between 20 second semester university students of German. The data were collected before and after L2 learners' exposure to the stimulus materials in order to monitor developmental aspects in L2 learners' verbal behavior on the sequential level. In the classroom, explicit teaching techniques contrasting the American English and German structures were combined with role-play situations for practice.; The data suggest that (1) L2 learners may acquire the sequential organization underlying specific verbal activities in the target language and (2) L2 learners benefit from the learning experience with a heightened cultural awareness as they are demonstrably able to anticipate, interpret, and appropriately engage in culturally variable behavior in talk-in-interaction when using the target language. Furthermore, L2 learners employ specific markers and strategies as they negotiate the availability of two sets of sequential organization in their effort to signal their cultural orientation on the sequential level striving to maintain mutual alignment and contiguity with their coparticipants.; Demonstrating that the acquisition of culturally variable sequential organizations of verbal activities is possible for L2 learners and successfully promotes cultural learning, this study paves the way to integrate CA-based materials into the foreign language curriculum. It is suggested that CA may provide language teachers with (1) a tenable socio-interactionist definition of culture that is specifically relevant for foreign language teaching and (2) teaching materials that are empirically researched. It is argued that thusly the persisting predicament of developing a systematic cultural curriculum for the foreign language classroom may be remedied.