Multimodal Turn Beginning in Chinese English-as-a-foreign Language Learners’ Conversation

Turn beginning is a crucial location for establishing speakership and gaining recipiency. It is one of the most challenging tasks for an individual learner. This study used a corpus-based approach to investigate how Chinese EFL learners employ multimodal resources to successfully execute turn beginnings, with a specific focus on potential variances between intermediate and advanced proficiency levels. The findings revealed a hierarchy in the allocation of linguistic resources, with feedback being the most prevalent, followed by demonstrative, connective, and syntactic relevance. This suggested that learners prioritized feedback on the previous turn at the outset of a turn, often serving an interactional function to convey acknowledgement and recognition. Interestingly, intermediate learner group used more demonstrative to provide a cue for utterance-interpretation. However, the advanced learner group preferred to establish logical relevance between each turn through the use of connective. In terms of non-linguistic resources, learners predominantly employed gaze and head movement to project turn beginning intention, demonstrating their capacity to harness multimodal resources to a certain extent. Moreover, the advanced learner group’s increased use of hand gesture suggested that as language proficiency improved, learners were more inclined to engage the hearer’s attention at the commencement of turns. This study contributes to the scholarly understanding of multimodal turn-taking by elucidating the distinct characteristics that learners exhibit when initiating conversational turns. It offers insights into how learners navigate the complex interplay of linguistic and non-linguistic resources in the pursuit of effective communication.