„Was heißt X?“: Eine konversationsanalytische Untersuchung zu kontingenten Lehrerfragen im universitären deutschsprachigen L2-Unterricht

Abstract

Language practice related courses such as "oral communication skills" play an important role in the German language teacher training program, because they help the students benefit more from the further subject-related courses. They also improve the quality of their future professional practices as teachers. Despite the need for improving the content of these courses with research findings, there are only a few studies on the topic. With this gap in mind, the current study sets out to closely examine 16 hours of naturally occuring "oral communication skills" classroom interaction in the fall semester 2016-2017 using conversation analysis as research methodology. The findings suggest that the "was heißt x? (what is x?)" questions from the teacher in non-topic-initial positions and their variations are used as recurrent interactional resources that are associated with certain actions in managing teacher-led speaking activities. These questions were described based on the following categories: (1) narrowing questions, (2) focused repetitions, (3) ambigious questions after dispreferred learner turns, and (4) knowledge-checking questions in referential follow-up. The findings also show how certain types of questions contribute to the elicitation of certain answer types and lead to the change in participation structure. Although "was heißt x?" questions are usually designed at asking for the meaning of a particular subject matter, depending on the local context, they also pave the way for certain pedagogical actions. Therefore, they serve as verbal resources that the teacher deploy at his disposal and by doing so manage speaking activities.