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In:Dialogue in Multilingual and Multimodal Communities
Edited by Dale Koike and Carl S. Blyth
[Dialogue Studies 27] 2015
► pp. 221–251

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Artifacts, gestures and dispensable speech

Multimodality in teaching and learning a biology laboratory technique

 | University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
 | Hokusei Gakuen University, Japan
Published online: 10 July 2015
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.27.08mor
The chapter examines the nature of embodied, multimodal language use in science training in a segment of an interaction where a Japanese professor and a Chinese student engaged in teaching and learning a basic laboratory technique. The analysis, informed by ethnomethodological and conversation analytic studies of learning, reveals how the participants’ coordinated, non-verbal conduct played a critical role in the professor’s instruction and the student’s indication of understanding, which in turn mutually affected each other. The student’s limited proficiency in Japanese, the chosen language of instruction, was not explicitly problematized during this interaction, but her ability to demonstrate understanding by acting appropriately in accordance with the ongoing development of the professor’s instruction was treated as essential for this apprenticeship learning.
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2021. The trends and developments of L2 Japanese research in the 2010s. Language Teaching 54:1 ► pp. 90 ff. DOI logo
Kimura, Daisuke & Suresh Canagarajah
2020. Embodied semiotic resources in Research Group Meetings: How language competence is framed. Journal of Sociolinguistics 24:5 ► pp. 634 ff. DOI logo

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