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Research indicates the importance of small talk in achieving professional goals and promoting social relationships in workplaces, and yet second-language (L2) users often face challenges in participating in small talk. As such, the need for teaching small talk has been emphasized; however, the understanding of how L2 interactional practices for small talk develop remains limited. This study aims to demonstrate the change in L2 English practices used for initiating and extending small talk that occurred during service encounters over a thirty-month period. The data were gathered from 74 h of audiovisual recordings of service encounters at a small convenience store in Hawai'i. The focal participant is the service provider, a Korean adult with limited L2 English proficiency, who had emigrated from South Korea a year before the start of the data collection. By employing multimodal conversation analysis (CA) and the Pearson's chi - square test , the results of the study demonstrated three aspects of change in the service provider's practices for small talk: increasing the frequency of initiations, emerging new methods for initiation, and developing expansion techniques for small-talk sequences. The study advances the understanding of the development of multimodal L2 interactional practices for small talk in service encounters. • Longitudinal Multimodal conversation analytic study • Interactionally relevant quantification • An L2 English user's developing small talk practices during service encounters • New methods for initiating small talk with customers • Developing expansion techniques for small-talk sequences [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Examines how dissenting raters exit disagreements regarding placement proposals. • Shows two accepted practices for revising a placement proposal. • Shows two unaccepted practices for revising a placement proposal. • Highlights the influence of social concerns on raters' resolution strategies. • Findings provide practical implications for resolving placement discrepancies. Assessment of student writing by human raters often involves discrepancies, necessitating discussions for resolution. This study explores this process within a US university's English for Academic Purposes program, focusing on the exit practices of dissenting raters - strategies used to conclude disagreements. Utilizing multimodal conversation analysis, the study reveals that dissenting raters typically employ two exit practices: acknowledging personal bias and deferring to the opinions of co-present raters. While acknowledging bias effectively ends disagreements, deferring to others can be perceived as challenging equal participation, thus introducing complexity into the resolution process. The study also highlights how social concerns regarding professional credibility and reputation influence raters' resolution strategies. The findings offer valuable insights into the interactional complexities of academic placement meetings, underscoring the importance of understanding exit practices in these contexts. They also demonstrate the potential of a conversation analysis approach for uncovering unexplored facets of rater interactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligibility research has substantially advanced our understanding of how second-language (L2) English intelligibility is influenced by characteristics of the L2 speaker's pronunciation and experience and by listener-related variables. Comparatively few studies, however, have investigated the influence of contextual factors on intelligibility. This study aims to address this lack with an analysis of how one Thai learner of L2 English increasingly utilized context for constructing L2 English intelligibility in interactions. The focal participant was a Thai college student attending an eight-week business English course at a Thai university. The data for this study came from a series of one-on-one conversations, alternating among six instructors with diverse first language backgrounds and discussions during regular office hours. Applying the methodology of membership categorization analysis (MCA) and conversation analysis (CA), the analysis revealed that the focal participant increasingly used sequential organization and descriptors in order to proactively construct an intelligible pronunciation of the job referent term that she used. The findings add to our understanding of how context supports the interactive construction of L2 English intelligibility. They also support the use of (M)CA as an innovative methodology for intelligibility research and, further, suggest teaching implications for ensuring L2 English intelligibility in interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• ^s • The participant calibrated her interactional practices to address unfolding communicative needs and problems through extensive other-initiated repair activities. • The participant demonstrated persistent orientations to constructing more desirable social images that lead to increased L2 speaking opportunities and more complex L2 use. • The developing self-presentational practices included better recognition of the initiating action; the disuse of Thai linguistic resources, and the adoption of more simplified accounts in self-presentations. A first-time encounter is an important opportunity for creating social networks, as participants routinely conduct self-presentations during this occasion. Second-language (L2) users, however, face particular difficulties engaging in first-time encounters; but no studies have examined how L2 users' self-presentational practices develop over time. To fill this gap, this study investigates how an L2 English user calibrates her interactional practices to conduct self-presentations during first-time encounters. The participants were a senior Thai student attending a Thai college and six English instructors whom she met for the first time in a series of dyadic conversations-for-learning over a two-month period. Conversation analysis revealed how the focal participant displayed her orientations toward intersubjective and relational issues, resulting in better recognition of the initiating action. She then accordingly calibrated her response designs over time to resolve repeated intersubjective issues and ensure relational achievement during self-presentational sequences. The results suggest pedagogical implications for learning self-introduction practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]