Interactional competence in L2 text-chat interactions: First-idea proffering in task openings

This study explores the opening phase of online task-based text-chat interactions between second language (L2) learners of English at three proficiency levels through a Conversation Analysis (CA) inspired, moment-by-moment analysis, and relates differences between groups to participants' differential levels of interactional competence. We focus on sequential environments where the first idea potentially leading to an accomplishment of a decision-making task is proffered, as well as any preliminaries (e.g., greeting) prior to the first-idea proffer. We found that participants oriented to a normative expectation of proffering ideas for task accomplishment early on, regardless of proficiency. Higher-level learners' first-idea proffers were more likely to occur in the form of a response to a soliciting move, whereas lower-level learners’ idea-proffers were less responsive. While preliminaries were overall not common, their production increased with proficiency level and only high-level learners produced extended preliminary sequences. As proficiency increased, linguistic formats for first idea-proffers also showed greater linguistic variety whereas lower-level learners exclusively relied on a narrow range of performative lexico-syntactic forms such as I want X constructions. The findings provide insight in how L2 learners deploy their interactional competence to open work on tasks in text chat.