Conversation Analysis as a Model for Language-Learning Objectives for ESL Students

1.0 INTRODUCTION
1.1 Target Learning Situation
The present paper aims to exploit Conversation Analysis as a model of linguistic
to produce language-learning objectives for the English Second Language (ESL) students.
Undoubtedly, English is the actual universal language, although it is the second largest
native language across the globe, as well as utilized as official language in seventy states.
English can be at least understood almost everywhere in the world among the educated
people and scholars, since it is the globe media language, as well as the language of TV,
computer, cinema, and pop music world. All over the universe individuals known several
English words, their meaning, and pronunciation. Therefore, English language learning is
a very crucial course to ESL students or non-native learners with dynamic dimensions of
life. As ESL learners aim to travel and work in different places across the world, ability to
communicate in languages is a vital component in their future. Linguistics or study of
languages involves an analysis of language form, meaning and context. Furthermore,
language learning is a syllabus that can be viable to both college and university students
whom courses are based to almost all countries across the world. Language learning
benefits college and university ESL students because they are connected to the outside
world. Language learning program can be used across the world in colleges and
universities that provide courses functional in outside countries. This program is
specifically directed to students because they are in preparation for the future and are the
next citizens of any country. At university level, learners have the adequate capacity to
understand any language regardless of the complexity of linguistics. The language can be
used by students of any course to converse or to communicate to people from different
race or culture. In most occasions, languages help in interaction and communication of
people from different countries. Developing a language to college students can also be an

easy way of making them develop a sense of cohesiveness. It is through language
learning that the students will improve their skills both in the school and at home.
Language learning however requires a set of new skills in order to fit in the existing
curriculum. Additionally, in order to incorporate this syllabus in the system, the language
selected should be widely used to most of the nations across the world.
Students that will need this language are the ESL college students pursuing
courses that are offered in many countries across the world. Some courses are functional
to both local and international levels. English language learning is therefore an advantage
to ESL learners in various college and universities because it creates extra capabilities for
easier and fast communication with scholars or lecturers from different countries. At this
juncture, students are competent of understanding and interpreting some of the languages.
2.0 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
2.1 The concept of pragmatic model (Conversation Analysis).
Conversation analysis is considered as one of the primary aspects in pragmatics. By
and large, conversational analysis is an important approach in the study of social interaction.
It embraces both the verbal and non-verbal conduct of the everyday lives of people in the
society. It is imperative to point out that this pragmatic model has had significant influences
across humanities and social sciences, even linguistics. Today, conversational analysts seek
to describe the stable practices and underlying normative organizations of interaction by
individuals within the society (Sidnell, 2016).
Since pragmatics is found in the linguistics field, it is concerned with the language
use. Thus, it emphasizes on the real speaker and his or her interaction of language instead of
analysing word’s internal structure or grammar. In regards to that, pragmatics is located at the

border of sociolinguistics and linguistics. However, the current paper does not focus on the
issue of where and how to place pragmatics as a subject, rather it will investigate
conversation analysis in the process of generating language learning objectives of the ESL
students. Moreover, conversational analysis emphasizes on the use and structure of actual
conversations in real life. Besides, conversation analysis is always based on the fact that
language often utilized in utterance and conversation never stands on their own.
Conversational analysis is needed in teaching English learners for various reasons.
First of all, acts of speech are limited to the instant linguistic and thus does not allow people
to analyze entire conversations efficiently. This is because actual speakers rely on each other:
“Each speaker is affected by what the previous speaker says, and what each speaker says
affects what the next speaker says.”(Cutting 2005, p.24). For conversations, individuals need
to extend their vision field to the context as Mey (1999) states that “the entirety of societal
relevant circumstances that surround the production of language” (p.135). Therefore, analysis
of a conversation is more concerned with the open and extended conversation.
Unlike other theories based on the distinction between performance and competence,
conversational analysis studies and dismisses the particulars of genuine speech;
conversational analysis focuses on studying the naturally-occurring talk and indicates that
spoken interaction is systematically orderly in all its facets. Furthermore, conversational
analysis suggests that it is feasible to investigate talk-in communication by simply evaluating
its recordings. Nonetheless, CA is neither designed for, nor intended on investigating the
fabrication of interactions from a viewpoint that is external to the participants own way of
thinking and understanding of their communication and circumstances.

2.1.1 The Principles of the Conversation Analysis
Although Conversation Analysis is considered as an ethnomethodology, it has individual
principles’ subset. According to Markee (2015) there are four objective of conversation
analysis, which align with the Seedhouse’s CA principles (Seedhouse, 2005). These
principles include:
1. Orderly interactions at all points - interactions are as a result of organised events
(Seedhouse, 2005; Markee, 2015).
2. Analysis is bottom up and data driven (Seedhouse, 2005; Markee, 2015).
3. Contributions to interaction are context shaped- it is essential to consider the sequential
environment in which contributions to talk take place and in which participants are
interacting, as this plays a role in the form of the interaction (Seedhouse, 2005; Markee,
2015)
4. No detail order can be dismissed a priori as irrelevant, accidental, disorderly, where
conversation study needs data that is taking place naturally (Seedhouse, 2005; Markee,
2015).
2.1.2 Types of interactional organization of conversation analysis
The present research will utilize the four types of interactional organization to conduct
CA. These types of interactional organization, include adjacency pairs, repair, turn-taking,
and sequence, and are closely interlinked.
One basic structure of the CA is turn-taking, which observes how and when
participants take turns during the conversation (Schegloff et al. 2001). Turn-taking focuses on
how individuals in interaction pass turns, hold turns, get out and in of a talk (Schegloff et al.
2001). Normally, there are certain paralinguistic or linguistic devices that individuals can use