A conversation analytic investigation into L2 classroom interaction and informal formative assessment

Abstract

With the reconceptualization of Formative Assessment (FA) as a much more complicated, a locally situated and a dynamic process, it is now acknowledged that FA does not only involve formal practices but also informal ones which occur in and through interaction. This study adopts the term “informal formative assessment” (Ruiz-Primo, 2011) to refer to any of those FA practices emerging in and through language classroom interaction. Although the informal dimension to FA has been discussed in theory, how informal FA emerges in practice in naturally-occurring classroom interaction has not been explored adequately. While classroom interaction research neglects the relevance of their findings to FA practices, classroom-based assessment research is heavily concerned with formal FA disregarding the place of interaction in assessment practices. Aiming to bring the two kind of research together, this article, in a single case analysis, proposes Conversation Analysis (CA) for illustrating how FA informally emerges as an interactional practice in an L2 classroom. Sample data is presented from a corpus of video-recordings of an EFL class (55 classroom hours) in a preparatory school at a Turkish state university.

Keywords: informal formative assessment, classroom interaction, conversation analysis