Debating in classroom: the effect of ephemeral group dynamics on repair strategies and the perception of asymmetries among French-speaking ELE university students

Abstract

The aim of this article is to study speech management in a class of French-speaking undergraduate students learning Spanish as a Foreign language (ELE), in the context of a specific communicative activity: debating. For this purpose, using the methodology of conversational analysis, we focus on the qualitative and multimodal study of two complementary phenomena: reparation and group dynamics. By precisely considering the participatory framework of this pedagogical activity, in which the class is divided into two ephemeral groups that compete to win the debate, we seek to demonstrate that the dynamics of this type of group has a direct impact on the linguistic production of students, since we have found out that they opt for request the participants from their own group to carry out the repair and that the intervention of participants different from their own group, on the contrary, hinders it. These strategies, added to the ludic dimension, indicate the emergence of a group dynamic that favors interactions among the learners, the appropriation of the pedagogical activity and the reduction of the perception of asymmetries.