ABSTRACT
This and the next chapter provide an overview of sequencing practices. In this chapter, we offer a conversation analytic account of how participants manage to foreshadow, initiate, respond to, and expand upon their own and others’ talk while conducting a wide range of social actions such as announcing, complaining, complimenting, inviting, offering, and rejecting. How to do these social actions has been a consistent focus of ESL/EFL materials and classroom instruction for quite some time now. With a focus on the microanalyses of actual talk, CA findings can help to invigorate teachers’ interest in achieving a nuanced sense of language and social interaction. In turn, teachers can offer learners a more specific, more situated, and more complex picture of how sequencing works. Transcripts of naturally occurring talk showcasing real-life sequencing practices are used for illustration. The pedagogical relevance of the various sequencing practices is considered throughout the chapter. We provide a range of awareness-raising and practicing activities for teaching sequencing at the end of the chapter.
