Olcay Sert

Mälardalen University, School of Education, Culture and Communication, Faculty Member

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I am the editor-in-chief of Classroom Discourse (Routledge) and the author of Social Interaction and L2 Classroom Discourse, published by the Edinburgh University Press in 2015. My main research approach is conversation analysis and my research deals primarily with classroom discourse, interactional competence, and language teacher education.
Supervisors: Steve Walsh and Paul Seedhouse

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Books by Olcay Sert

The Interplay between Collaborative Turn Sequences and Active Listenership: Implications for the Development of L2 Interactional Competence

Teaching and testing L2 interactional competence: bridging theory and practice , 2019

This chapter focuses on collaborative turn sequences in the domain of "active listenership" (AL) ... more This chapter focuses on collaborative turn sequences in the domain of "active listenership" (AL) and explores how speakers of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) develop L2 interactional resources over time in group discussion tasks. Based on a sample from a database of interactions in 174 multi-party L2 discussion tasks recorded at different times throughout one academic year, the study shows how demonstration of active listenership can be an indicator of L2 Interactional Competence. Instead of displays of listenership and recipiency as studied in different contexts before in the form of, for instance, response tokens (Gardner 2001) and reactive tokens (Xu 2014), the focus is on the concept of demonstration of active listenership, through, for instance, collaborative turn completion (Kim 2002), or through what Lerner (2004) calls collaborative turn sequences. The turn completions investigated in this database are strong versions of listenership, as they bring concrete evidence to how understanding is achieved on sequential basis; i.e. the listener of the previous turn in each turn completion demonstrates to the co-participant her understanding of the previous turn. The analysis of the data revealed that such completions are achieved by participants' employment of subordinate clause completions, offers of candidate lexical items, and turn initial conjunctions. An important, longitudinal finding is that the deployment of such resources increases over time, as participants become more experienced interlocutors in EFL. The findings have important implications for teaching conversational skills and the development of L2 interactional competence (Pekarek Doehler and Berger 2016).

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Classroom Interaction and Language Teacher Education

The Routledge Handbook of English Language Teacher Education, 2019

Language teachers perform constant multi-tasking in L2 classrooms while they are teaching. They m... more Language teachers perform constant multi-tasking in L2 classrooms while they are teaching. They manage materials, behaviours, content, discourse, and organise and co-construct learning environments at the same time. At the heart of this multi-tasking lies a process of instant decision making during classroom interaction: they initiate turns, respond to student utterances, attend to linguistic mistakes within micro-seconds. As research in the last two decades has clearly documented, the convergence between pedagogical goals and unfolding classroom interaction (Seedhouse, 2004; Walsh, 2011, 2013; Sert, 2015) is perhaps one of the most important means of creating learning opportunities for students. Opportunities for language learning are facilitated if interactional practices are fine tuned to the goal of teaching the L2. Mainly using conversation analytic methods, researchers of L2 classroom interaction have documented the interactional manoeuvres of teachers so as to understand the microscopic details of instructed language learning and teaching. Findings of these empirical observations have recently been incorporated into teacher education and development programmes, increasing the importance of classroom interaction in teacher education. Against this background, this chapter provides a review of classroom interaction research with a focus on the role of teacher talk in facilitating language learning opportunities and presents how classroom interaction and teacher development are closely related by reviewing research in both initial teacher education and in-service teacher education. After presenting research on the longitudinal development of L2 CIC, it makes a case for a technology-enhanced, reflective, and micro-analytic teacher education framework, presents practical applications, and discusses future directions.

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Analysing ELT in the European Arena: Multilingual Practices

by Gudrun Ziegler, Olcay Sert, and Natalia Durus

International Perspectives on ELT Classroom Interaction , Apr 1, 2015

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Sınıf İçi Etkileşim ve Yabancı Dil Öğretmeni Yetiştirme

Sert, O. (2016). Sınıf İçi Etkileşim ve Yabancı Dil Öğretmeni Yetiştirme. (Ed.) Akcan, S. ve Bayyurt, Y. Türkiye’deki Yabancı Dil Eğitimi Üzerine Görüş ve Düşünceler (s.14-30). İstanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınevi., Mar 10, 2016

Bu bölümde yabancı dilde sınıf içi etkileşim (L2 Classroom Interaction) çalışmaları tanıtılarak, ... more Bu bölümde yabancı dilde sınıf içi etkileşim (L2 Classroom Interaction) çalışmaları tanıtılarak, son yıllarda ülkemizde Konuşma Çözümlemesi (Conversation Analysis) yöntemi kullanılarak yapılan araştırmalar örneklendirilecektir. Sınıf içi etkileşim çalışmalarının bulguları sadece öğretme ve öğrenme süreçlerini daha iyi anlamamızı sağlamakla kalmamakta, bunun yanında yabancı dil öğretmeni yetiştirmeye çok önemli katkılarda bulunmaktadır. Bu bağlamda, Türkiye’de yapılan sınıf içi etkileşim çalışmalarını gerçek sınıf verisi kullanarak örneklendirecek bu bölüm, yakın zamanda Türkiye’de geliştirilen bir öğretmen yetiştirme modelinin de (Sert, 2015) araştırma süreçlerini kısaca tanıtacaktır. Temellerini Sınıf İçi Etkileşimsel Yeti (Walsh 2006) ve Konuşma Çözümlemesi’nden alan bu model, hizmet öncesi eğitime katkıda bulunarak ülkemizde etkileşimi merkezine koyan yabancı dil sınıfları oluşturulmasını amaçlamaktadır.

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ORIENTATIONS TO LINGUISTIC FORM IN MEANING AND FLUENCY CONTEXTS IN A TURKISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE CLASSROOM

by Olcay Sert and Betul Cimenli Olcars

Interaktion im Fremdsprachenunterricht: Beiträge aus der empirischen Forschung , 2017

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Sert, O. (2015). Social Interaction and L2 Classroom Discourse. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. [Shortlisted for the BAAL Book Prize 2016 ]

Social Interaction and L2 Classroom Discourse, Aug 20, 2015

This book offers a close investigation of interactional practices in L2 classrooms, and provides ... more This book offers a close investigation of interactional practices in L2 classrooms, and provides a deeper appreciation of the processes involved in the co-construction of understanding and knowledge in settings for instructed language learning. Using Conversation Analysis, and referring to epistemic, multimodal, and multilingual resources, Olcay Sert interprets key interactional and pedagogical practices observed in language classrooms by closely examining the verbal and nonverbal features of teacher-student interaction; for example, gaze, gestures and orientations to classroom artefacts. With an emphasis on the multimodal and multilingual resources, this is one of the first studies to comprehensively address these issues in L2 classrooms with a clear theoretical and practical underpinning, and is an essential study for researchers and postgraduate students in TESOL and Applied Linguistics.

Professor Numa Markee, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign:

Sert’s must read book introduces conversation analysis to readers who are not familiar with the power of this methodology, while simultaneously providing a detailed theoretical discussion of cutting edge issues in the field. And his contributions to understanding teacher education as a data driven enterprise are both provocative and enlightening.

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Papers by Olcay Sert

Learning Potentials Afforded by a Film in Task-Based Language Classroom Interactions

The Modern Language Journal, 2021

The use of films as teaching and learning materials can provide a variety of opportunities for in... more The use of films as teaching and learning materials can provide a variety of opportunities for interaction in second language classrooms. Research on the usage of films in language-learning tasks to provide opportunities for learning and interaction, however, is scarce. Drawing on a database of video-recorded interactions in an upper-secondary English-as-a-foreign-language classroom in Sweden and using multi-modal conversation analysis, this study examines affordances of student interactions during a film-based discussion task. Taking a sociomaterial perspective, we focus on students' co-narrations of the film in a group task and show how the emergent discussions about the film facilitate collaborative attention work (CAW). Our findings reveal that the CAW in this film-based discussion task unfolds when students (a) correct each other, or (b) collaboratively search for words while discussing the scenes in the film. Our analysis of these sequences reveals the learning potentials that emerge in film-based discussions. The findings have direct implications for the use of audiovisual materials-in particular, films and movies-in language-learning tasks.

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Resolving interactional troubles and maintaining progressivity in paired speaking assessment in an EFL context

by Merve Hırçın Çoban and Olcay Sert

Any form of talk-in-interaction is organized in relation to progressivity (Schegloff, 2007; Hosod... more Any form of talk-in-interaction is organized in relation to progressivity (Schegloff, 2007; Hosoda & Aline, 2013). Progressivity of interaction may involve resolving interactional troubles and producing subsequent talk, and it is endemic to the organisation of conversation at the level of turn construction (Schegloff, 1979). In testing speaking skills, as progressivity of talk between peers is central for teachers to be able to assess students' performances, troubles that halt progressivity and the resolution of such troubles by the students deserve close analyses. Against this background, this paper focuses on how paired L2 (i.e., English) speaking assessment interactions unfold in a Turkish higher education context. Using multimodal conversation analysis, we investigated the interactional resources that are deployed to maintain progressivity when there is a halt in the unfolding interaction, an under-researched phenomenon in L2 speaking assessment contexts. We used transcriptions of 100 video-recorded paired test interactions, each of which were approximately four minutes long. We identified and described the ways interactional trouble was flagged, paying close attention to how embodied resources, such as hand and other gestures, gaze direction, posture and body orientation, and facial expressions (Nevile, 2015), are used by the interactants. Based on 100 paired assessment interactions our findings reveal that in moments of interactional trouble participants make transitions to a sub-topic, formulate understandings, and engage in collaborative completions to maintain progressivity, using a variety of interactional resources as part of their interactional repertoires. The ways such troubles unfold in interaction and how they are resolved by L2 users to maintain progressivity of test-talk have potential to inform research on the assessment of Interactional Competence.

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Preference organization in English as a Medium of Instruction classrooms in a Turkish higher education setting

Linguistics and Education, Feb 7, 2019

Previous conversation analytic research has documented various aspects of preference organization... more Previous conversation analytic research has documented various aspects of preference organization and the ways dispreference is displayed in relation to pedagogical focus in L2 and CLIL classrooms (Seedhouse, 1997, Hellermann, 2009, Kääntä, 2010). This study explores preference organization in an under-researched context, an English as a Medium of Instruction (EMI) setting, and it specifically focuses on how a teacher displays dispreference for preceding learner turns. The data consist of 30 h of video recordings from two EMI classes, which were recorded for an academic term at a university in Turkey. Using Conversation Analysis, we demonstrate that the teacher employs a variety of interactional resources such as changing body position, gaze movements, hedging, and delaying devices to show dispreference for preceding student answers. Based on our empirical analysis, the ways the teacher prioritizes content and task over form/language are illustrated. The analyses also reveal that negotiation of meaning at content level and production of complex L2 structures can simultaneously be enabled through teachers’ specific turn designs in EMI classroom interaction. This demonstrates that preference organization, particularly in a teacher's responsive turns, can act as a catalyst for complex L2 production and enhance student participation. This study has implications for conversation analytic research on instructed learning settings, and in particular on teachers’ turn design in classroom interaction.