Social Interaction

1. Introduction

In institutional interaction, the next action on the part of a participant who is a representative of the institution may become fairly predictable for other participants, with this predictability resulting from a combination of action projection, institutionally-relevant and oriented-to categorization of participants, and/or in situ activity structure and the current state of an activity. One next action on the part of an institutional representative which may become highly predictable is selection of a party (an individual or a group) to take the next turn. In this paper, we focus on interaction between teacher and students in two distinct educational settings and, more specifically, on the predictability for students of who the teacher—the institutional representative—will select to take the next turn. We show some of the different ways that the students orient to this next action through gaze shift, which makes visible their anticipation of what the teacher will do next. This gaze shift thus becomes part of a display of their understanding of the relevant categorization of the participants as teacher and students and of how they read the current state of the activity. Finally, anticipation of who the teacher will select to take the next turn facilitates the taking of this next turn in a timely manner, while also allowing students to resist their selection. Such anticipation can thus be understood as a component of the students' displayed competence to participate in interaction in an educational institution, or more simply of their displayed classroom interactional competence (Walsh, 2012), a concept which, along with Sert (2019), we argue is relevant for students as well as teachers as they interact in the classroom.

2. Gaze in Interaction

An early and robust finding of conversation analytic research is the importance of gaze in face-to-face interaction (e.g., Goodwin, 1980). In relation to next speaker selection, gaze is relevant both as an indicator of who the current speaker is selecting and as a display of recipiency, of availability to be selected, and/or of (un)willingness to participate. In some cases, it may also be a display of anticipation of a highly predictable next action.

2.1 Gaze and next speaker selection

A large body of research has investigated how gaze is used to select next speaker(s). A detailed examination by Lerner (2003) reveals how speaker selection is established through gaze among other resources. Gaze also can be used with other speaker selection terms such as “you” to disambiguate who is being selected. However, gaze is context-sensitive in that it is sensitive to the gazing practices of coparticipants, such as the establishment of mutual gaze. These findings are supported by Auer (2021), who through the use of eye tracking devices found that, in multi-party interaction, gaze is the most common technique for turn allocation. Gaze can be used alone or with other verbal and non-verbal resources to accomplish next speaker selection.

Several other studies have investigated how gaze is used in the language classroom to establish speaker selection. Language teachers need to establish mutual gaze with their students in order to successfully allocate turns through embodied means (Evnitskaya & Berger, 2017; Fasel Lauzon & Berger, 2015; Kääntä, 2012; Mortensen, 2008). Teachers may also employ gaze shift to widen the participation framework to reengage and include the whole class after a dyadic interaction with one student (Waring & Carpenter, 2019), as well as to give the go-ahead to a student to continue his or her turn (Sert, 2019). Gaze is thus an essential part of next speaker selection, and other aspects of participation, in both mundane and institutional—including educational—settings.

2.2 Gaze: Availability, willingness to participate, and anticipation of predictable action

Of great relevance for next speaker selection are signs of availability and willingness to participate and gaze serves as an interactional resource to display this across various settings. For example, in medical consultations, patients may utilize gaze to display recipiency and readiness to respond (Heath, 1986). In pediatric consultations, made more interactionally complicated by the presence of a parent or other adult caregiver, though gaze shift is not the primary focus of her study, Stivers (2001) has shown how child patients may use gaze to the doctor to display readiness to respond to a solicitation of problem presentation, while not gazing to the doctor may be one feature of a child's not responding. In addition, child and parent may use gaze to negotiate who will respond and a parent may display through gaze shift toward their child their understanding of the child's responsibility to respond. In a very different sort of institutional setting—participatory democracy meetings with numerous participants in which turn-taking is mediated by a chair—Mondada (2013) illustrates how gaze is one resource participants use to secure the right to be selected next. More specifically, would-be next speakers use gaze to the chair, along with other resources, to display their desire to take the next turn and the chair uses gaze, along with other resources, to display recognition of this desire. In quite different settings, then, gaze is one resource through which willingness, even desire, to participate is constructed.

Turning to educational settings, and specifically to classroom interaction involving teacher and student(s), student gaze, in conjunction with other resources, plays an important part in displaying availability and willingness to participate. Sahlström (2002), for example, in research which seems to predate the application of the concept of willingness to participate to classroom interaction, points out that during plenary classroom interaction, which can be understood as two-party interaction between the teacher as one party and the students as the other, but in which individual students are allocated turns by the teacher, students' gaze toward the teacher and bodily orientation constitute a display of recipiency. In addition, when students display that they are willing to participate—more specifically to be allocated the next turn to respond to a teacher question—by hand-raising, this also involves a shift of gaze to the teacher, so that the gaze shift can also be seen as part of such a display. More recently, Kääntä (2012) also shows how secondary school students in Finland use gaze and hand-raising (along with other embodied resources) to display willingness to be selected as next speaker to answer a question. While hand-raising can be commonly observed in many classrooms, there are other classrooms in which it is much less common, particularly if the physical layout of the classroom more easily facilitates mutual gaze between the teacher and individual students (Evnitskaya & Berger, 2017; Fasel Lauzon & Berger, 2015). Fasel Lauzon and Berger (2015), for example, show how students in a French L2 classroom use gaze to the teacher, without hand-raising, to display willingness to be selected to answer a question, and thus willingness to participate. Similarly, Mortensen (2008) shows how adult learners in a Danish L2 classroom use gaze to display willingness to be selected and how teachers orient to this. Mortensen (2009) also shows how students can use gaze to establish recipiency from another participant (typically, the teacher) when they self-select, thus displaying a stronger willingness, even desire, to participate.

Students, though, are not always willing to be selected as next speaker and they can also use gaze to display unwillingness to participate.¹ Mortensen (2008) and Fasel Lauzon and Berger (2015) both show how students can use gaze withdrawal in a sequential location where teacher selection of next speaker is imminent to display unavailability to be selected and how teachers orient to this. Bezemer (2008) and Sert (2015) also show how a student may withhold gaze to the teacher to display resistance to being selected. As also shown by both Mortensen (2008) and Fasel Lauzon and Berger (2015), when a teacher nevertheless selects a student who has used gaze to display unwillingness to be selected, or at least does not display willingness, this can have sequential consequences, as the student may resist his or her selection by, for example, claiming insufficient knowledge to answer.

Gaze is thus not only used to select next speaker, but also to display availability and willingness to participate, as well as unwillingness to participate. In this study, we add to this line of research by illustrating how, in educational interaction between teacher and students, when the teacher's action of next speaker selection becomes highly predictable, gaze shift can display students' anticipation of this next action, in addition to their availability and/or (un)willingness to participate. As several of the different studies reviewed above also show, one thing that makes predictable teacher selection of somebody to be selected to answer a question is the projectability of the possible end of the teacher's question. In addition, though, the type of activity and the current state of the activity can also contribute to this predictability and may make it predictable precisely which student will be selected to take the next turn, which may allow an individual student to anticipate their selection. For example, Mortensen and Hazel (2011) show how in a round robin activity, the structure and current state of the activity may allow a student to anticipate both his or her own selection and what he or she will be expected to do.

When, due to a combination of the projectability of the teacher's current action, the relevant categorization of the participants as teacher and students, and the structure and current state of the activity, it becomes highly predictable which student will be selected to take the next turn, this student can display their anticipation of being selected and thus of their reading of the current state of the activity and the teacher-student interaction. In some of the studies reviewed above, there are indications of connections between student gaze shift and their reading of the current state of the interaction. For example, Sahlström (2002) shows how non-selected students shift their gaze off the teacher when lowering their hand, while the selected student maintains gaze on the teacher. Though Sahlström does not state this explicitly, this shows the different students' understanding of who has been selected to take the next turn. As a second example, Fasel Lauzon and Berger (2015) emphasize how students' displays of willingness to answer are precisely timed to the projectability of teacher allocation of a turn. The timing of gaze shifts displays students' competence to participate in the interaction. Evnitskaya and Berger (2017) explicitly argue that students display their developing interactional competence through the timing and design of their embodied conduct, including the use of gaze toward both relevant objects and other participants, in relation to the current state of the interaction. Similarly, in this paper we argue that by displaying their anticipation of being selected next, students' gaze shift can also display their reading of the current state of the interaction, and thus of their interactional competence. In addition, though, we also argue that because such gaze shifts more specifically display students' understanding of the structure of the current pedagogical activity and their reading of the current state of the activity, they not only display their more general interactional competence, but also their classroom interactional competence.

3. Data and Transcription

As mentioned above, the data come from two distinct educational settings. Excerpts 1, 2, and 3 are drawn from interaction at Tokyo Global Gateway (TGG), an institution designed to provide visiting students with opportunities to use English and participate in experiential language learning. More specifically, these data are drawn from warm-up sessions between a particular kind of teacher called an agent² and a group of students that the agent has been assigned to for the day. In excerpts 1 and 2, the students are from a middle school in the Tokyo area. In excerpt 3, the students are from a university, also in the Tokyo area. Each of these three excerpts involves a different kind of teacher-led activity, as described in the introduction of each excerpt. At the time of conducting this study, three different warm-up sessions had been transcribed, amounting to approximately 90 minutes of data. (Several hours of data from roleplays and CLIL classes had also been transcribed, but were not drawn on for this study.) Excerpts 4 and 5 are drawn from a video-recorded English class at a Japanese university taught by a first language user of English. In these data, the students have been working in groups and the teacher is now calling on each group to report on their work. This class was chosen from a dataset that includes 30 hours of video-recorded data over one semester. These five cases were selected because they are clear examples of the phenomenon—gaze shift displaying anticipation of and orientation to the highly predictable teacher action of selecting somebody to take the next turn—and because they demonstrate that the phenomenon can be found in different types of activity (excerpts 1, 2, and 3) and in different sorts of classroom (excerpts 1, 2, and 3 on the one hand and excerpts 4 and 5 on the other). In addition, excerpt 5 provides a relatively rare instance of students being unwilling to participate. While this may be obvious, it should also be noted that this phenomenon is only found when it is highly predictable whom the teacher will select to take the next turn. If this is not particularly predictable, because, for example, the teacher acts in ways that are less predictable, the activity is not conducive to such predictability, or the students often self-select even during teacher-led activities, the phenomenon is unlikely to be found.

All data have been transcribed and analyzed through the use of multimodal conversation analysis. Filtered video clips are available for each excerpt, edited where necessary to remove identifying information. Talk has been transcribed based on standard conversation analytic conventions (Jefferson, 2004). Embodied conduct has been transcribed in a manner loosely based on Mondada (2018). Descriptions of embodied conduct appear in gray font beneath the talk. The producer of the embodied conduct is indicated on the left with the first initial of the participant's pseudonym, followed by a hyphen and a two-letter abbreviation (e.g., rh, gz) for the type of conduct. (See appendix for list of abbreviations.) The timing of the start of the embodied conduct is noted through the use of vertical bars within the talk and in front of the verbal description. When more precise timing of the embodied conduct is needed for the analysis, commas depict movement into the conduct. An arrow (--->) shows the continuation of embodied conduct. Stills and gifs are also used to depict features of embodied conduct important for the analysis. The placement of a still in relation to the talk is shown through the insertion of a sharp symbol (#) followed by a number, both in gray, within the talk. The placement of a gif is shown through the insertion of an ampersand (&), in gray, within the talk at the point where the movement depicted in the gif starts and where it ends.

4. Analysis

4.1 Student gaze shift in anticipation of selection

Excerpts 1 to 3, which all come from warm-up sessions between an agent and students at TGG but involve different activities, show how the high predictability, within the current state of the activity, of next speaker selection by the teacher (i.e., agent) makes it possible for a student to anticipate his or her own selection, as shown through their gaze shift. Excerpt 1 comes from an activity in which each of the eight students introduces himself or herself to the agent Tom.

Extract 1.

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Gif 1: Gif for line 02, Tom's point and Eri's gaze shift

Prior to this excerpt, Tom started the self-introduction activity by introducing himself to the students. He then instructed the students to introduce themselves to him and selected the student standing to his left to do this first. After this student completed his self-introduction and Tom had closed the interaction that he was having with him, Tom and the other students applauded.³ Tom then selected the student to this student's left to do the next self-introduction. A predictable pattern thus began to emerge, with Tom selecting students to do their self-introduction in a predictable order and with the end of the self-introduction and the interaction between Tom and this student marked by applause. With the applause, it became highly predictable that Tom would soon select the student to the left of the student who had just finished their self-introduction to do theirs next.

In excerpt 1, Eri very clearly displays her orientation to being selected next and her reading of the current state of the activity. In line 01, Tom and the other students are clapping. This is applause following the completion of the self-introduction by the student to Eri's right. With the completion of this student's self-introduction, six of the eight students have completed theirs. There are thus only two students remaining who have not done a self-introduction. On this basis alone, Eri should be able to see that there is at least a 50% chance that she will be selected next. The chance of her being selected next, though, is actually much higher, as she is standing to the left of the student who has just finished, so Eri should be able to see that, if Tom continues with the order that he has so far consistently maintained, she will be selected next. As can be seen in #1 and #2 and in the gif, while other students continue to clap, in line 02 Tom stops clapping and briefly holds his hands together (#1). He then transitions into an open-handed point, or palm-select (Greer & Potter, 2008) of Eri (#2, gif). Simultaneously, Eri shifts her gaze to Tom (#2, gif), before then shifting it to her nametag, which she holds up for Tom to view (#3).⁴ In line 03, she starts her self-introduction by stating her name. Through her gaze shift to Tom, Eri displays her anticipation that he will select her as the next student to do her self-introduction.

Excerpt 2 involves the same agent, Tom, and the same group of students. The self-introductions having been completed, and Tom having asked and received answers about such things as the students' school and which agents the students worked with on the previous two days of their three-day visit to TGG, the participants are now starting a new activity that Tom calls “make a story.” As Tom explains it, this involves the first student saying one, two, or three words, which the next student adds to, and so on, so as to build up a complete story. In lines 01-05, Tom uses talk and gesture to select Zen to start the activity.

Excerpt 2 (simplified).

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Gif 2: Gif for line 08, Sho's gaze shift

As Tom completes his instruction for Zen to start the activity, the student standing to his right, Dai, shifts his gaze to him (line 05). Having been selected, during the silence in line 06, Zen shifts his gaze off Tom while Dai turns toward him and Sho also gazes to him (#1). Both students next to Zen are thus gazing to him as he starts talking in line 07. Through their gaze, they thus orient to Zen as having been selected by Tom to start the activity. Also, though, if Tom maintains control of next speaker selection, and if his selection of the student to go next is to follow a similar pattern as in the previous self-introduction activity, then it is predictable that he will select either Dai or Sho to go next. Their gaze to Zen displays a degree of engagement in the activity that is compatible with anticipation that they will be called on to make the next contribution to the emerging story.

In line 07, Zen says one word, “today.” As he articulates this, he shifts his gaze to Sho, so that the two establish mutual gaze (#2). During the silence in line 08, Sho shifts his gaze off Zen and gazes forward (#3 and gif), following which Tom palm-selects him. By shifting his gaze forward, Sho displays his understanding that he will go next and thus his anticipation of being selected, prior to Tom's selection of him. He is able to do this because Zen's gaze shift to him projects for him the completion of Zen's contribution and displays for him Zen's understanding that next student selection will follow the same pattern as established in the self-introduction activity. Sho is thus able to read the current state of the activity so as to see that he is next. Finally, in line 09, Sho does something similar to what Zen has done and shifts his gaze to the student to his left as he makes his contribution.

Excerpt 3 involves different students and a different agent, Mikey. Prior to self-introductions, Mikey is writing nametags for the students. This involves asking each student what color he likes and then his name, following which Mikey writes the name on a nametag of the chosen color and hands it to the student.

Excerpt 3.

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Gif 3: Gif for lines 03-04, Keita's and Mikey's gaze shifts

In line 01, Mikey is writing the name of the student to Keita's left, Nagi, and both Keita and Mikey are gazing at Mikey's clipboard, where he is doing this writing (#1). In the current state of the activity, it is highly predictable that once Mikey finishes writing Nagi's name and gives him his nametag, Keita will be selected next to choose a color for his nametag. That is, there are four students currently in this group and the other three⁵ have already received nametags. Also, for each of the other three, Mikey first asked which color they wanted for their nametag. Finally, for each of the other three, the interaction between Mikey and this student was closed through the exchange of the nametag.

In line 02, Mikey (probably) says “here you are” to Nagi and the nametag is exchanged. As Nagi responds in line 03, Mikey starts to bring his gaze to Keita (#2 and gif). Then, before Mikey even asks Keita the predictable question of what color he wants, Keita shifts his gaze to Mikey (#3 and gif) and states his desired color (line 04) in the form of a question. Through this gaze shift and the information about his desired color, he displays his anticipation both that he will be selected next and of the type of information that he will be expected to provide first. As with excerpts 1 and 2, he thus displays his ability to correctly read the current state of the activity in order to anticipate what will happen next in relation to himself. Finally, Mikey accepts his provision of information as a legitimate next action on Keita's part (line 05).

Gaze shift to the agent—the person whose relevant identity as the teacher makes him (or her, though not in the data above) responsible for next speaker selection in these teacher-led activities and gaze shift off the prior speaker or prior focal point of the activity (i.e., where writing is taking place) display an orientation to being selected next, willingness to participate by being selected next, and the predictability for the students of the agent's upcoming action of selecting next speaker. Also, though, gaze shift by both the likely next speaker and the current speaker contribute to the predictability of the order of selection in these activities. This is especially clear in excerpt 2. As shown in excerpt 3, when selection of who will go next is highly predictable, this may actually render unnecessary the action of next speaker selection by the agent. Through their ability to read the current state of the activity and its relevance for them, and through this to make use of the predictability of the agent's next action, the students are able to launch their next action-within-interaction in a smooth, timely, and therefore, competent manner. This ability can thus be seen as one aspect of students' classroom interactional competence.

4.2 Student gaze shift in anticipation of group selection

The data in this section come from a university EFL classroom. The participants are an American teacher and twenty-one Japanese EFL students. In Excerpts 4 and 5 the students are engaged in small-group discussion in which they discuss a question proposed by the teacher. At the end of the discussion time, the teacher selects them as groups to answer his question.

Excerpt 4. Gaze shift to teacher.

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Gif 4: Gif for lines 02-03, G2 members' gaze shifts

Gif 5: Gif for lines 04-06 showing the difference in orientation between G2 and the rest of the groups; G2 members are seated in the third and fourth rows on the teacher's right.

The teacher starts by selecting group 1, the group sitting in the front, as the party to speak next (lines 1-2). Meanwhile, group 2 members (Dai, Jun, Yuu), sitting behind group 1, are looking toward their group space (#1) (Kendon, 2010). However, when the teacher selects group 1 both Jun and Dai look at the teacher noticing this selection (line 2). In line 3, Dai shortly gazes toward Yuu and then back at the teacher orienting to the fact that he is expecting his group to be selected next and showing availability and willingness to participate (#2). In line 4, Gen from group 1 responds saying that his group members are not ready yet. The teacher accepts this response and moves on to select group 2 in line 6. The moment the teacher selects group 2, at least two members are looking at him displaying their anticipation to be selected next. This enables the group selection to be successful (Mortensen, 2008). Once their selection has been established, they shift their gazes from him and toward each other, displaying their engagement in preparing for the response.

The teacher treats group 2's need for more time as acceptable and waits for around 20 seconds (lines 7-10). During this time, the group members continue looking at each other and speaking inaudibly. Though their talk is unintelligible in the recording, it is clear that the teacher treats it as part of the activity as he maintains his gaze and waits for them. When they do not provide a response, the teacher finally moves on to the next group. Dai shows his understanding of this by looking at the teacher and nodding in line 11.

Even though group 2 members did not respond appositely to the teacher's question, their well-timed shift of gaze to the teacher enabled him to select their group smoothly and successfully. Moreover, looking at the whole class, when group 1 has been selected it is possible to distinguish group 2 from the other groups. The group 2 members continue gazing toward the teacher as they monitor his actions, displaying their anticipation and understanding that they will be selected next (gif). The other groups are looking down, looking at each other, or occasionally gazing toward the teacher.

4.3 Deviant case: Gaze shift and student resistance to anticipated selection

Excerpt 5 is from the same class as excerpt 4 on a different day, involving two of the same students, Jun and Yuu. It is a deviant case in which the students use their gaze not to show their availability but to resist being selected next.

Excerpt 5. Resisting being next.

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Gif 6: Gif for lines 02-04 G2 members' gaze shifts

In line 1, the teacher uses “okay” to mark a shift in the activity to each group providing their answer. This attracts the attention of at least three members of group 2, Jun, Ren, and Ken, who shift their gazes to him (#1). In line 3, he uses talk and a gesture to select group 1. Ken withdraws his gaze from the teacher and looks to his left as the first indication of displaying unavailability (gif). In line 4, the teacher asks group 1 a question and while doing so, Ren also looks down, displaying his unavailability (gif). In line 5, Jun completes group 2's withdrawal by looking at Yuu (#2). From lines 7 to 8, Gen from group 1 answers the question, which the teacher then repeats (line 9).

In line 11, the teacher multimodally selects group 2; however, none of them are gazing toward him and there is no establishment of mutual gaze (#3). Instead, they continue looking at each other and speaking inaudibly (lines 12-14). The students thus resist being selected by displaying their unavailability and unwillingness to participate. For the rest of the interaction, not transcribed here, the students continue talking to each other and eventually provide a wrong answer. This case is different from Excerpt 4 in that the students clearly avoid establishing gaze with the teacher. By avoiding gaze, they show their unavailability and unwillingness to participate. Nevertheless, this group also displays their understanding of the current state of the activity and the predictability of their group being selected next.

These two excerpts have shown that the groups who are expected to take the next turn orient to this by shifting their gaze to the teacher, who is responsible for selecting the next group, as excerpt 4 demonstrates. However, the students do not always display their availability to be selected and may resist being selected next by avoiding mutual gaze with the teacher, as excerpt 5 shows.

In general, therefore, it seems that gaze can be used as a resource to indicate availability and willingness to participate, as well as a resource to indicate the opposite, unavailability and unwillingness to participate. These gaze shifts display students' ability to use the predictability of the teacher's actions to read the current state of the activity and anticipate their group's selection. This provides them with the means to either facilitate the teacher's selection of their group or to resist it, and can thus be seen as an aspect of their classroom interactional competence.

5. Concluding Discussion

As decades of conversation analytic research, involving different languages and different settings, both mundane and institutional, has shown, things such as the possible relevance of turn transition are projectable. And as the research reviewed above shows, in teacher-student interaction, students may display through their embodied conduct, including gaze, their projection of incipient turn transition. In our analysis, though, we have not focused on this sort of projectability. Instead, what we have tried to show is how, in educational settings, the structure and current state of the teacher-led activity may make highly predictable not only that the teacher is about to select a student or group as the next speaker but also which student or group the teacher will select and what he, she, or they will be expected to do. Mortensen and Hazel (2011) have shown this to be true for activities that they label as round robins and two of our examples (excerpts 1 and 2) can also be characterized as this sort of round robin, while two others (excerpts 4 and 5) can be characterized as akin to this sort of round robin, except that it is groups who are selected, rather than an individual student. However, while in excerpt 1 the structure of the activity as a round robin is already clear by the time Eri is selected, in excerpts 2, 4, and 5, this structure is still in the process of emerging. Also, in excerpt 3, the activity has not been organized as this sort of round robin and the predictability of Keita being selected next has more to do with the fact that he is the only student who has not yet been given a nametag. When which student or group of students will be selected by the teacher to be next and when what that student or group will be expected to do both become highly predictable, this predictability relies on more than the projection of incipient turn transition built into the design of the teacher's current turn. It also relies on the structure and current state of the activity, which is perhaps most visible when the activity is structured as a round robin but can also be visible when this structure is just emerging or is somewhat different.

When students orient to this predictability by displaying, through gaze shift as well as possibly other resources that we have not focused on, their anticipation of being selected and of what they are expected to do, they also display their understanding of relevant categorical identities (teacher, student, member of a group of students) and identity-relevant actions of the participants (that the teacher manages selection of next speaker, that students—as individuals or as part of a group—produce relevant responses). This embodied display of anticipation, then, is an embodied way of doing-being-a-student-in-a-highly-predictable-activity.

This brings us to the issue of the students' interactional competence, and more specifically their classroom interactional competence. One feature of teacher-student interaction is that the unfolding structure of the activity within which the interaction occurs may sometimes become highly predictable. When this happens, part of the competence of students to participate in the activity as students is their understanding of the structure of the activity and their ability to correctly read the current state of the activity. Even when the students fail to do what the teacher has selected them to do, as in excerpt 4, or display an unwillingness to do what the teacher has selected them to do, as in excerpt 5, their ability to correctly read the current state of the activity displays their competence to participate in classroom interaction.

Through examining concepts such as the predictability of the next action, willingness to participate, and classroom interactional competence, we highlight how participants navigate and interpret learning activities as they unfold. Our analysis reveals how participants, both individuals and groups, anticipate and shape forthcoming actions, as well as the subtle cues that signal their readiness, or reluctance, to participate by being selected next.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, JSPS Grant-in-aid 20H01283, Simulating the Wild through Experiential Language Learning.

Appendix

Abbreviations used for transcription of embodied conduct

^{1 Something similar can happen outside educational contexts as well. Weis (2018), for example, shows how a selected next speaker can use gaze aversion or gaze to another participant to avoid taking the next turn.↩}

^{2 The term agent is used by TGG to designate this kind of teacher. One agent is assigned to a group of students for the day and guides and accompanies this group as they go to different locations within TGG. At these locations, students either engage in roleplay activities or participate in CLIL classes. The agents help students prepare for roleplays, participate with the students in roleplays, and provide English support for the students in CLIL classes. Agent is an acronym for Assistant Guide ENtertainer Teacher.↩}

^{3 Saying that Tom and the other students applauded glosses something that was actually much more complex, as the group applause that followed each student self-introduction is something that developed throughout the activity. This development, though, is beyond the scope of this paper.↩}

^{4 Like so much else that is of interest in these data, this is beyond the scope of this paper, but by holding up her nametag, Eri can be seen as attempting to preempt any problems that Tom may have with catching her name.↩}

^{5 A fifth student will arrive in a few minutes and join this group.↩}