Collaborative Accomplishment of L2 Peer Feedback Interaction: Pursuing Uptake Through Accounting and Depersonalizing

Abstract

Although L2 learners are often encouraged to provide feedback on each other's performance of paired/group interaction tasks in collaboration and interaction, how they jointly engage in feedback talk in ways that are conducive to establishing shared understanding of the institutionally preferred actions is largely unknown. Using multimodal conversation analysis, this study examines real-time peer feedback interactions in a synchronous video-mediated study group and uncovers the ways L2 learners expand on each other's feedback contributions for collaboratively accomplishing peer feedback in and through interaction. The analysis will explicate (a) accounting as a justifying device and (b) depersonalizing as a mitigating device. The findings show that the participants, in follow-up feedback turns, attend to the local interactional circumstances created by peer response, tailor their feedback to the institutional goals of the focal setting, contribute to intersubjectivity, and pursue feedback recipient's agreement and strong display of uptake. The analysis brings insights into the construct of L2 Interactional Competence (IC) necessary for following up on peer feedback turns. The study discusses the practical implications of the focal phenomenon for oral assessment preparation classes.