Article published In: Australian Review of Applied Linguistics
Vol. 21:2 (1998) ► pp.123–137
Interaction or interrogation? a study of talk occurring in a sample of the 1992 VCE Italian oral common assessment task (cat 2)
Published online: 1 January 1998
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21.2.07fil
https://doi.org/10.1075/aral.21.2.07fil
Abstract
The study reported in this paper examined turn-taking and sequence organisation in a sample of twenty-one interactions derived from the 1992 Victorian Certificate of Education Italian oral Common Assessment Task. The most common adjacency pair was found to be the question and answer, the assessor having the right to ask questions and the student to answer. Student initiated questions occurred in five environments and only when conditions were created for them to do so. The assessor’s role was to open and close sequences and sections and to initiate topics principally through the question. Two types of sequences were identified, question/answer and expanded sequences. It was found that there were two groups of assessors. Those who predominantly set up question/answer sequences, and those who set up post sequences.
References (34)
Atkinson, J. M. (1992) Displaying neutrality: formal aspects of informal court proceedings. In P. Drew & J. Heritage (eds.) Talk at work. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Atkinson, J. & P. Drew. (1979) Order in court: The organisation of verbal interaction in judicial settings. London, Macmillan.
Bazzanella, C. (1990) Phatic connectives as interactional cues in contemporary spoken Italian. Journal of Pragmatics, 141:629–647.
Cafarella, C. (1997) Assessor accommodation in the VCE Italian oral test. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 20,1:21–41.
Drew, P. and J. Heritage (1992) (eds.) Talk at work. Interaction in institutional settings. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Elder, C. (1993) Report on the native-speaker presence in university lote courses. Melbourne, University of Melbourne.
Filipi, A. (1994) Interaction in an Italian oral test: The role of some expansion sequences. In R. Gardner (ed.) Spoken interaction studies in Australia. (Australian Review of Applied Linguistics Series S Number 7) Melbourne, ALAA.
Frankel, R.M. (1990) Talking in interviews: A dispreference for patient-initiated questions in physician-patient encounters. In G. Psathas. (ed.) Interaction competence. Washington, DC: University Press of America.
Gardner, R. (1994) On some apparently anomalous uses of mm in a corpus of Australian English: Mm as a prior turn completer. Unpublished manuscript. University of Melbourne.
Giannone, S. (1996) Overlapping talk: Talk show interaction. Paper given at the 1996 ALAA Conference, Sydney.
Greatbatch, D. (1988) A turn taking system for British news interviews. Language and Society 171:401–430.
Heritage, J. (1984) A change of state token and aspects of its sequential placement. In J.M. Atkinson and J. Heritage (eds) Structures of social action: Studies in conversation analysis. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Heritage, J. and D. Greatbatch. (1991) On the institutional character of institutional talk: the case of news interviews. In D. Boden and D. H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and social structure. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Jefferson, G. (1973) A case of precision timing in ordinary conversation: Overlapped tag positioned address terms in closing sequences. Semiotica, 91:47–96.
(1984) Notes on a Systematic deployment of the acknowledgment tokens “yeah” and “mm hm”. Papers in Linguistics 171:197–206.
Lazaraton, A. (1991) A conversation analysis of structure and interaction in the language interview. Unpublished Ph.D dissertation. UCLA.
McHoul, A.W. (1978) The organisation of formal turns at talk in the classroom. Language in Society 71:183–213.
Mehan, H. (1985) The structure of classroom discourse. In T. van Dijk (ed.) Handbook of discourse analysis. Vol. 31 Discourse and dialogue. London, Academic Press.
Minini, G. (1985) The ontogenesis of telephone interaction. Rassegna Italiana di Linguistica Applicata 171:187–197.
Ross, S. (1992) Accommodative questions in oral proficiency interviews. Language Testing 9,2:173–186.
Rubino, A. (1990) From guest to family friend: Fieldwork progress within the Italo-Australian context. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 13, 1:77–99.
Sacks, H., E. Schegloff and G. Jefferson. (1974) A simplest systematics for the organisation of turn-taking for conversation. Language 501: 696–735.
(1982) Discourse as an interactional achievement: Some uses of ‘uh huh’ and other things that come between sentences. In D. Tannen (ed.) Analysing discourse: Text and talk. Washington, Georgetown University Press.
E. Schegloff, G. Jefferson and H. Sacks. (1977) The preference for self-correction in the organisation of repair for conversation. Language 531:361–382.
Sorjonen, M.J. & J. Heritage (1991) And-prefacing as a feature of question design. In L. Laitinen, P. Nuolijarvi, and M. Saari (eds) Leikkauspiste. Helsinki, Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura.
ten Have, P. (1991) Talk and institution: a reconsideration of the “asymmetry” of doctor-patient interaction.” In D. Boden and D.H. Zimmerman (eds) Talk and Social Structure. Cambridge, Polity Press.
Testa, R. (1988) Interruptive strategies in English and Italian conversation: Smooth versus contrastive linguistic preferences. Multilingua 7,3:285–312.
van Lier, L. (1989) Reeling, writhing, drawling, stretching and fainting in coils: Oral proficiency interviews as conversation. TESOL Quarterly 231:489–508.
Victorian Board of Studies (1994) The LOTE Italian VCE study design. Victoria, Victorian Board of Studies.
Cited by (5)
Cited by five other publications
Vonen, Maria Njølstad
Filipi, Anna, Binh Thanh Ta & Maryanne Theobald
Kim, Younhee & Andrew P. Carlin
Nevile, Maurice & Johanna Rendle-Short
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.