Establishing mutual understanding in CLIL-based L2 game interactions

Abstract

Interactional competence (IC) can be conceptualised as systematic procedures by means of which members of a social group organise their conduct in mutually understandable and accountable ways (Pekarek-Doehler and Pochon-Berger 2011, 2019: 53). Recent research on IC from various second language (L2) settings including classroom interactions, au-pair settings and even online text-chat interactions is remarkable. However, little attention has been paid to the exploration of IC components in CLIL-based family game interactions. To fulfil this gap, the present study aims to describe how mutual understanding is established between family members playing a science board game in an L2 (English) through multimodal Conversation Analysis (CA). For this purpose, 104 instances of 'establishing mutual understanding' sequences from a dataset comprising 5 hours of video recordings from six families have been analysed. Findings of the study reveal that family members share perspectives in English on (i) a vocabulary item, (ii) game question, and (iii) candidate responses to the question on the card during a CLIL-based game in order to achieve mutual understanding, which is a component of interactional competence (IC). Analysis of the data demonstrates that establishing mutual understanding is accomplished through sixteen different interactional resources including the use of L1, re-examining the card individually or as a group, using certain discourse markers, hinting through visuals on the card, embodiment of verbal utterances, and checking a vocabulary item from a phone. Findings of the present study are expected to have implications for IC research and portrayal of learning in both science and language learning in terms of revealing meaning-making process and management of mutual understanding in a CLIL-based family board game context. Science and English learning/teaching were carried out simultaneously by the board game used. With this respect, the study will also provide English and Science teachers with an exemplary application process in their teachings.