Conversation Analysis and Language Alternation

This study reports the ways in which students and their teacher co-manage the interactional problems resulting from a lack of understanding of the teacher’s instructions produced in the second language (L2) through language alternation practices. The study draws on data from two Italian as a Foreign Language lessons in an Australian high school involving students aged 13–14 at an A2 (CEFR) level of proficiency. Analysis shows: (1) how the teacher ascribed “expected” knowledge states to students